Those Often Found Guilty
by SerenaArythusa
Summary: [First ever Thief BakuraKisara on ff.net!] Slight parody on other non-canon YGO! pairings, herein lies the observations of the captive Kisara and the captor, thief king Bakura, in their relation towards each other.
1. In a Dark, Dark Universe

Sweet adolescent Bakura on a casserole! I didn't think I'd written this much. Beware of the obnoxiously long first chapter, sorry.

First -this is my pairing. No one can take it away from me! *grabs Kisara and thief Bakura plushies and looks around menacingly* This is, until someone proves me wrong, the very first thief Bakura/Kisara fic ever on ff.net, or probably anywhere. It's the pairing guaranteed to offend all people of all non-canon shippings! It pisses off any Kaiba/any prissy YGO! girl as well as all gay pairing fans.

Now, what I try to make unique about this is that I'm concentrating on gradually shaping Kisara's personality to fit Bakura's standards, not the other way around. You know how these pairings usually go, the mushy-gush love scenes where fill-in-the-blank hardened criminalish character falls madly in love with the girl's cute little eyes. I spit on you, ha! 

  
  


Chapter 1: The Unorthodox Kidnapping

The Pharaoh was dead, Set was merrily on his way to forming an unstoppable rebel army, Akunadin's state of mind had been successfully altered for the worse-

And surprisingly, the giant blue beam of death that shot up into the sky was not the fault of the thief Bakura. The snide comment that followed, however, was.

"That was subtle," the revolutionary remarked, then quickly returned to sulking silently in his prison cell.

The priest Set sneered, looking down at the lowly cell from his high seat, but did his best to hold his tongue. This had been a considerable breakthrough -the first time he had persuaded Kisara's psyche to summon her powerful Ka without having to jump in and save her from falling into oblivion first. True, there were now two rather large holes in the ceiling, and passing guards continually dropped through them to their doom, but it was an improvement nonetheless.

This still left a rather large problem involving Bakura. "This isn't the time for you to be making snide remarks," snapped the priest, his arms crossed. "You're bloody lucky I found it in my heart not to destroy you immediately, after what you did to Pharaoh."

At this the thief burst out laughing. "Sorry," he mock apologized in recovery, "but between the two of us, I appear to be the much better actor, though I must give you credit for being able to keep a straight face while saying that." He frowned. "I'm not deaf. And even if I were, it'd be pretty obvious by now. You need me alive until you can strengthen Diabound enough to defeat any of the actually loyal priest's forces so that you can become Pharaoh. Your father must be very proud."

And now it was the priest's turn to sulk, for that had been exactly what he had been planning. Why couldn't he be nice and quiet and passive, like Kisara? Then again, Bakura seemed to have more control over his Ka than the girl did. Shame. But he wasn't going to bother much with the thief. The other captured villagers would probably be able to dull his sharp tongue.

"You act real tough now," one remarked, his words slurred from his swollen cheek, "but come out of your little cell and say it to my face, why don't you?"

Bakura smirked, shook his head. "Toughness I might be feigning, but intelligence I'm not. You see, while you're out there killing yourselves, thinking it's to your benefit, the bastard priest up there is counting your victories like a farmer counts the eggs a chicken lays. Besides, any time he wants to, he could just knock out that girl he has locked up there and have you blown to pieces, and that, frankly, isn't really worth my while."

Set glared impatiently. He was clearly aware of his time budget- the occasional swing of his eye towards the hidden entrance to the underground training halls was evidence of that -so he sent down his ratty servant to negotiate while he continued to toy with his other, more cooperative prisoners.

The servant was a short, ugly man, with masses of fat replacing his neck, permanently raised eyebrows, and a demented smile that looked a lot more like fang-bearing than anything else. Waddling down the steps to Bakura's cell, he took hold of the bars and leered into the smutty area. Bakura considered doing harm to him, but his knife had been confiscated, and he felt any attempt to break the obnoxious man would seem petty if the damage was not permanent.

"The master is not pleased with your behavior, it seems," he breathed.

"You noticed," the thief retorted, pulling his hood over his eyes and lying back against the wall. "Aren't you the observant one, eh?" He didn't need to look up to see that the servant was fuming. "Listen, if you really do insist upon bothering me so much, do try to inform your master that he'd better realize that this isn't getting anywhere and kill me already, because all this sitting around is really starting to get on my nerves."

But sitting around is exactly what he did. Of course, he did much prefer this to death, but it was a monotony he was quickly coming to hate. Every night after hours he would spend most of the night attempting to break free of the lock- he had quickly learned that any attempt to summon his Ka outside of the dueling arena over the bottomless pit of death had been prohibited. The news that Diabound could pass through walls thanks to the Millennium Ring had spread quickly, it seemed. Of course, that had been confiscated, too. In all possible ways removed from any sharp objects he could use, he rummaged for any loose, wiry objects to use as a lock pick. He had been thus far unsuccessful. But not tonight, he resolved.

He had observed in a rather put-off manner the amount of freedom that Kisara was allowed. She had free reign to roam around the chamber doing whatever she pleased while Set went off to his royal chambers. Of course, the girl would never dare displease the priest. She was insanely loyal to him after he had rescued her from a mob of attackers in the streets, referring to him most respectfully as "Master Set," when spoken to. Then there was her Ka -the great Blue Eyes White Dragon that appeared only when she fell into an unconscious state, or, at least, it had so far. Bakura despised her for her shameless strut of innocense, but in this instance, he didn't want to offend his one possible way out.

"'ay," he whispered as the girl wandered close to the staircase. She looked around for the source of the sound, and the thief spoke again, "'Ay, you there. Over here."

Kisara swayed at the top of the stairs, pointing to herself and mouthing, "Me?" Bakura let out something of an affirmative snort, and she crept down the stairs. But upon seeing who had called her, she let out a little gasp and jumped back. "It's you!" she murmured.

"Who were you expecting?" the thief asked. 

"I didn't know-" she paused, her words caught in her throat, "I didn't know you were here."

"Indeed," he answered, "I'm easy to miss. I mean, Set's only been shouting at me every bleeding second he gets for the past week. Then again," he amended, "you've been unconscious for half the time you've been down here, so you're excused."

"What do you want from me?" the girl demanded, carrying right on with her inquiry.

Bakura sighed, a tad disappointed that his select choice of words had gone unnoticed. "Let's consider, shall we? I have shown little to no interest in the women of this society, so it's unlikely that I've taken lust to you and am going to rape you. If I were now to kill you, I would be no closer to escaping, only now with a raging priest breathing fire down my back. To knock you out and use your Ka by force is useless, as your Blue Eyes is, truthfully, more powerful than my Diabound, and from what I've seen, your Ka's first and foremost instinct is to protect its owner. So what does that leave, eh?"

Kisara gulped. She wasn't much for this sort of talk when face to face with someone she had feared only to the highest degree. She had been told that the proper thing to do in the presence of an intimidating being like Bakura was to stand tall and at least pretend to be calm and collected, but that wasn't something that she was very good at.

"Let me help you out here," sighed the thief king, after a considerable silence. "You are on the outside of the cell and I am on the inside. Hence, I could use a bit of your help. Naturally I wouldn't expect pure kindness from the bottom of anybody's heart, so I'd be willing to exchange a favor. Enough for you?"

"I would never--!" sputtered Kisara indignantly, drawing back.

"Never betray Set?" Bakura suggested. "You're an odd one. What is it with you, anyway? What the hell did he ever do for you to win over your eternal gratitude?"

Kisara drew a long breath. She didn't particularly like talking openly about her captor. She was still so frazzled about the whole matter to really state her own opinion, yet somehow the thief had managed to violate some great belief of hers, one she couldn't leave injured. "He's certainly more of a gentleman than you could ever hope to be," she retorted, the sharpness of her words dulled by the faltering of her voice. "And above that, he saved my life. What sort of graditude is it to run off right after he did something so good for me?" The other merely grinned, as he did often.

"Excuse my persistence," Bakura mused, "I just don't like to go out of an argument when my opponent has even the slightest idea that they might have won out. But really--you think that Seto's giving you all of this free range out of the kindness of his heart? He probably has guards waiting right outside the door, just in case you do get enough backbone to run off. It's all a matter of gaining your trust--doesn't take a diviner to figure that one. Though, from what you've just said, his methods do appear to be working. Pity."

Kisara flushed bright red, causing Bakura to blink several times to adjust to the extreme change in pigment. In the lack of most all other pigment, she resembled a large, chalky bloodstain. It was a very specific hue. "That . . ." she murmured, "That's not true." That was her response, and it was her final response before she dashed up the stairs to a resting place near Set's chair. It was really all she said the entire night, or for indeed quite a while. Then again, she was always silent when the priest Set was in the room. Bakura hadn't quite figured that out yet--what was she trying to accomplish by this silence? Then again, it was just like a girl like her to be able to win over someone by pure innocence. He hated women like that.

Bakura's own day was passed in a similar fashion to Kisara's, sitting silent in his cell while the other prisoners blew themselves up. Kisara's ka was dormant throughout the battles--Set wasn't going to risk the commotion the beast's blast tended to cause and was biding a good deal of his sleeping time trying to find a way to muffle the noise. Judging by the dark rings under his eyes that had been developing recently, he apparently hadn't made any progress. This left Kisara the meander through the dungeon, dodging glances from the other prisoners, and avoiding Bakura's cell like the plague.

Bakura didn't much mind this. If the girl had hung out around him for too long, the priest might be suspicious. Not that he was really being particularly successful in convincing Kisara to help him. Lazily he watched with one eye open as a caterpiller-like monster engulfed a large pteradactyl. He quickly tired of the slaughter and scanned the other cells, towering up to the ceiling of the chamber, each small crevice stuffed with as many prisoners as they could manage. He himself had been rather lucky to get his own cell, though he imagined that this was only because they feared that he might slit the others' throats in their sleep, just for the hell of it. It was a stupid fear of theirs--Bakura tended not to kill unless it actually helped him.

His gaze caught the rogue arm of a fellow prisoner reach out of the bars of his cell. He was ignored, of course. A flailing arm pales in comparison to a gladiator fight of mutants. But Bakura watched it with interest--it disappeared again momentarily, then returned with a long pole of metal. That pole groped outwards then to the right, fiddling with a nail tacked to the wall. On this nail were a spare set of keys, which he caught on his pole and coaxed back to his cell. The man eyed the priest warily and, much to his apparent relief, saw that Set had not seemed to notice. He pulled the keys in close to him and hid them in his robe. Of course, he wouldn't try to escape while still watched. He would wait until dark to slip out and no one would notice he was gone. Bakura cocked an eyebrow. This man would probably be easier to reckon with than Kisara would. Then again, anyone would be easier to reckon with than Kisara.

But he was quickly disappointed. Problem was, when the time came it was not only his eyes watching, but Kisara's. She strode over to the cell, demanded (well, not quite demanded--demanded in a passive, Kisara-ish way) the keys. The prisoner eyed her nastily, but had not forgotten the power behind her ka, and handed over his escape ticket. Bakura furrowed his brow in frustration but kept quiet--Kisara would have to pass by his cell to get back to Set's chair.

"Hey," he called to her when she was in range. Kisara froze on the spot, a frightened rabbit sensing a wolf.

"What do you want?" she breathed, staring straight ahead into nothingness.

"Remember last night, when I said that the only real use I had for you would be if you yourself agreed to help me?"

The young girl gulped. "Yes."

The thief grinned slightly. "All right, then. Just checking. Then you ought to know that I've made something of an amendment to what I said."

Of all the things Kisara could have done then, screaming was not one of them. Bakura was good at keeping his victims from screaming.

  
  


It was a warm night, as it often was in Egypt. That was a good thing, as Kisara wasn't exactly prepared for a chill. A cool wind brushed against her face, whipping her hair into her mouth, causing it to mat and collect around her like a drenched sloth. No, she thought to herself, she really had no idea how she had gotten outside, but a throbbing pain in the back of her skull probably had something to do with it. slowly she opened her eyes--she was on a vast cliff, overlooking an empty wasteland of dunes. Off in the distance she could spy the twinkle of a flame, and it came from a small mass of adobe houses off to the east. She looked up--a ceiling of rock overshadowed her, closing in around the ddges like huge, stone jaws toying with its prey. She must have been inside some sort of cave, carved crudely into the side of a mountain. It must have been a perfect hideout for the thief--he could see out for miles yet be protected from the eyes of passers by. 

A thick brown line overtook the horizon--it was by now the most she could see of the car off city from which she--

She stood up in shock, but the throbbing pain caused her to retreat back into a fetal position at the edge of the cliff. Had she really traveled that far in so short a time? Bakura must have taken her--it was the only possibility. He wasn't there at the moment; he'd probably gone out for some sort of nightly slaughter, but she knew he would return. Her breath came in short, sharp bouts as she considered her situation. She had to get back--had to get back to Set. She still owed him, didn't she? And even if she didn't, she-- Well, she wasn't exactly sure what it was that made her want to return. But if not that, she reckoned, she at least needed to get back to the city. Had to find safety. Had to get away from that maniac, Bakura.

"In case you're planning to escape," drawled a nonchalant voice behind her, "be my guest. You've got no place to come but right back here, and I'd say that'd be most embarrassing on your part." Kisara whirled around, ignoring the terrible pain that came forth because of it. Standing not far behind her was Bakura, who managed to look a lot more intimidating without a safe barrier separating him from others. He carried over his shoulder a thing of rope and in his opposite hand a good amount of some sort of cloth. He dropped both near the innermost part of the cave, near the wall, and began preparing a place for a fire.

"See, that village off in the distance is the closest place of actual civilization," he continued, seeming not to take much interest in his hostage. "Though I could name at least twelve clans of outlaws that favor this bout of the desert, and I know they'd just love to get ahold of your pretty little neck."

"But are you not an outlaw yourself?" the girl countered, her voice once again wavering terribly.

The thief smirked. "Are you actually trying to sound brave, or are you just trying to seduce me like you tried to do with Set?"

"I was not trying to seduce him!" she said, appalled at the very thought. "I would never--"

"You continue to back up your arguments with the same information." Bakura observed as the first flame of the fire crackled. It burned through the wood and spread, finally ceasing at the ring of rocks that surpressed it. "Ay, now that's much better," he said approvingly. He watched the flames for a while more to be sure that they wouldn't overtake the rocks, then advanced on Kisara. "Now, to deal with you. . . ."

Kisara drew back immediately, yelping as she felt herself nearly lose balance. Bakura caught her by the arm before she could fall, but reflex caused her to yank her beyond his grasp, and she toppled to the floor. "What do you want from me?" she asked, "You have your freedom, what more good can I be for you? And if nothing, why do you not kill me?"

"Because I have ears, you see," he explained, standing over her with an amused look about him. "You have to be pretty oblivious to not know about that ka of yours. Of course, I wasn't originally planning to kidnap you. It's just not my style, you see. Can't stand the little prissy girls that you always have to kidnap. They keep going on about loyalty and about how what I'm doing is wrong and how true love will prosper . . . really not worth it, if you ask me. So just for you to know, I'm not kidnapping you for a ransom or anything. Cliched, that's the problem with it. Mainly because I don't like the idea of set winning out in anything. He has the advantage of people's trust, you see. I hate it when people have advantages."

"Funny," the pale girl muttered, "but I would have never guessed that from how you attacked the village before you killed the Pharaoh."

Here was the first time that Bakura took pause. "You should have seen how much back-up that bastard had," he snorted dejectedly, "Those god monsters, I swear--if he had been able to summon Ra, I wouldn't have made it." He laughed lightly at his near death. "But it's too late to be considering the 'if' variable now. Still--that bloody Set's monster and his sword--my wrist still hurts from where he got Diabound." He rubbed his wrist with a slight grimace, then seemed to remember something. "Speaking of which--'ay, Diabound!"

Kisara quivered in fear at the great beast's name, and a screech escaped her mouth as the giant head of a snake emerged from just outside the cave. It was slightly transparent in the fading sunlight, then solidifying as if passed into the safety of the cave. It was quickly followed by its upper half, a pale skinned, winged beast of humanoid build. It came to settle at the farthest end of the cave, looking far too large to be allowed. The snake half glanced at Kisara momentarily then whispered something incomprehensive to Bakura, who glared indignantly at him and told him off. The snake shrugged--or at least, it shrugged as much as a creature with no shoulders could--and went back to rest near it's other half.

Kisara tried not to imagine all the poison that snake could secret. She really, really tried. Didn't really do her any good, but she did try.

"He's really not that bad," Bakura insisted, giving the snake a slight pat on the head. "Though I usually just let people keep to their petty little fears about him. Eh, but there's no real use in giving you a fright. Don't want that dragon of yours coming out before the right time, eh?"

Kisara now considered her ka--even the thief himself dared not deny that the dragon's power surpassed his own. If only she could harness its power for herself. . . . Of course, the problem with that was that she had never actually seen her ka. She had no idea how to use it in battle, nor how to summon it at all. It had only appeared twice when she had fainted, and that had been when she was in great and immediate danger. She wasn't entirely sure she could convince her ka of the more inpending danger to come. She frowned as she considered this, lost in hopeless thought, but her thoughts were interrupted as she felt the touch of a warm, moist towel on her cheek.

"You're too fidgety," Bakura snorted, wiping her face off. "It doesn't do your ka any good unless we keep you in good health, hmm? Besides, with all that dirt on that white skin of yours, you were starting to look like a mouse."

She winced as the material sent a burning sensation through her. Some sort of herb had to be in there, she reckoned. Not unlike the ones she used to find in the village.

"Right now," said the thief, seemingly satisfied, "Now, why don't you go lay down by that fire to keep yourself warm. There's a good chance of a long day tomorrow."

Kisara bowed her head but didn't move. She was torn between the welcoming warmth of the fire and the knowledge that better off she kept herself, the stronger her ka would become, and then Bakura would be one step closer to obtaining the dragon for his own purposes.

Bakura wasn't much for begging anyone to do anything, especially if it was something the person was privledged to do in the first place. And so, he left her to her own devices and worked withh the rope and cloth he had brought, making himself a rhudementary hammock, and settled himself in.

This action seemed to upset his hostage. "Where do I sleep?" she asked, eyeing him warily.

"Anywhere," he answered, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "I don't really care. But I'm sure as hell not going to make anything for you. I'm already doing more than to be expected of the average kidnapper. Make your own hammock." And that was the last he said to her for the remainder of the night.

She waited for a long time after, watching him to see if he was asleep. She doubted he really was--he was probably still listening, even with his eyes closed--before moving in closer to the fire. It felt wonderfully inviting against her skin, and she hugged her knees up close to her to preserve body heat. It wasn't the cold of the night that chilled her, but the fear in her heart brought shivers to her skin.

She watched the desert as it lulled her to sleep. The vast plains of sand shifted and writhed, the wind combing long, streak-like patterns into it. Perhaps the royal troops were already looking for her--she would be rescued by morning, surely. But as she watched, and as nothing came, her assuredness became but a hope, and from that, a dream. . . .

  
  



	2. Silence before

Few notes: I'm changing the summary so that I can actually get the pairing in there and so that it doesn't sound quite so much like a Mary-Sue-er.

Bonsa- I mean, Bonasi, apologies for the, ah- 'sweeping' generalization, it just happens to be my manner of speaking naturally. It gets on my nerves when people are so impossibly passive and open to absolutely everyone's opinion- including that little pink rabbit over there- that you can't argue with them. I do rather like arguing, actually. So I should change that to- "It pisses off any Kaiba/any prissy YGO! girl as well as all gay pairing fans, except Bonasi." I'd use the -san honorifics, only I really hate it when people use honorifics unless to represent Japanese culture in, say, a fanfiction. 

And you're right about the Diabound thing- I was actually thinking of the ability to blend into its surroundings- that's the one he gets with the Ring. I'll change that, eventually.

Yes, Kisara IS canon. Ya'd think that anyone who knows about thief king Bakura would know about Kisara, the girl who's being stoned fairly early into the Egypt Arc. . . . Unfortunately, she went bye-bye near the end. 

And, ah- fair warning. There is a fairly odd take on Diabound in this chapter.

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The sun had risen early that morning, its warm, golden rays spanning across the landscape and into the girl's bright, blue eyes.

She shielded them with her hand.

The wind had picked up a bit and it had blown out the fire, though the area around it was still warm. A few twigs crackled every once in a while, sparked with a tinge of flame, but it was not enough to start up the full thing again. Bakura had apparently gone out early that day as he was nowhere in sight, but his ka remained, snoozing peacefully in the corner. Snoring, at that. At least, the snake part was.

A thought struck her- what was she to do about food? Her stomach was beginning to hurt her, and she drew herself into a tight ball, fell sideways onto the floor, and stared rather blankly at the open desert. She knew that Bakura wasn't lying about just how dangerous it was out there- she knew this because she had attempted to escape first thing in the morning, and hadn't even gotten a few feet out of the shade when she saw a whole pack of bandits camping in the area.

She began to wish that she had wings.

Eventually she shifted, so that her gaze fell on Diabound. The creature's presence made her uneasy- she had seen it briefly in battle and how it had destroyed all those homes- but somehow she felt that she wasn't nearly as afraid as she should have been. She couldn't quite put her finger on it, but there was definitely something different about the creature, and it no longer seemed to bring the power of the devil upon her. Picking herself up very slowly- first pushing by her hands, hoisting herself onto her knees, then bringing up her torso, chest, head, and her hair, long and silky on the rough floor. She brushed a few loose twigs and rocks out of it, then gracefully approached the ka. It twitched slightly as she approached, stirring in its dream. The snake half of it muttered something barely comprehensible- something involving a fox hunt- and snapped its gigantic jaws. Kisara stood still for a while, watching it, but it didn't wake, and she came closer.

A slight curiosity overcame her as she entered within feet of it- she wanted to touch it. She had never touched a ka before- was it possible to touch it? If so, what did it feel like? She had always seen them as half-transparent spirits, but if a spirit like that could destroy villages, then surely it would be a tangible being . . . ? She reached out a quivering hand and stroked the arm of the humanoid part of Diabound. It grunted slightly, but remained asleep.

Its skin was eerily smooth and soft to her touch, like some angelic being, and its white skin seemed to emit a warm, pleasant glow. She kept her hand there for a long time.

From far off, she realized, it would be difficult to discern between her hand and the ka- her unusual, white skin was nearly identical to it. She shivered, and quickly moved away, but she ran into something in her retreat. That something was the snake head, which roused instantly. She screeched, jumped back as it lifted its mighty head and shook it groggily, lashing out its tongue a bit. It hadn't quite opened its eyes yet, it squinted into the daylight, then at her, waiting for its eyes to adjust. As they did, it blinked several times to better its vision, and seemed to see her for the first time.

It started very suddenly, lifting itself up very high and, inevitably, whacking the top of its head against the humanoid half, effectively waking it. This created a sickening cracking sort of noise, and Kisara winced.

"That was embarrassing for the both of us," the snake muttered, its eyes scrunched up. The humanoid part grunted in reply, and the snake sighed. "Not the most articulate being on the planet." the snake explained apologetically. "Just be glad you're not stuck with him." Kisara wouldn't have blamed it for being unarticulate- she had presumed that kas couldn't talk at all.

The upper half of Diabound moaned again, pressing its hand to its stomach. The snake snorted. "Oh, shut up, ya pansy. Bakura'll be back with some food soon e-bloody-nough."

"Y-you. . . ." Kisara stuttered, still keeping her distance. "You eat? Kas need to eat?"

"Not really, love." the serpent said with a slight grin. "He just thinks he does- that bloke I'm attached to, I mean. All heart, that bastard, the brains all want to me. Sad, isn't it?"

Kisara nodded vigorously, not daring to disagree.

While she was attempting to deal with this dilemma, Set was dealing with his own problems, namely, her. Actually, he was just about to deal with it, as he had been invited (to be read as 'ordered') to attend a banquet for the entirety of the morning and had left that terribly fat, ugly bloke to take care of things.

And here he comes now, the midget beast- he finally gave in to the pressure of his master's finding out.

"So, let's try this again," Set hissed. "You secure the area in a perfectly airtight way and come back the next morning to see that You-Know-Who Number One has magically managed to escape- after you guaranteed that those cells were fool-proof- and not only to escape, but also run off with You-Know-Who Number Two!"

The man blinked. "Wait, now- who's who again? Are you talking about Bakura or Kisara here?" He received only a hushing sound from his superior. "Oh, right- Bakura's the one in the cell who you told everyone else you were going to kill but really were just going to use him in your rebellion! He's You-Know-Who Number One, right?"

Set stared at him for a moment in silence.

But then Karim interrupted. "Who are we talking about again?" he said cheerfully. "Oh, that bastard Bakura, you mean? Ah, terrible ordeal, but thank the gods above he's dead now, eh?"

Set grinned, but it was only really a well-disguised grimace.

Actually, Set had to smile a lot during that day, but Bakura didn't. Bakura was foraging for food, and had been for the bulk of the morning. He was only now returning, with a good three sacks gloriously filled, when he saw Kisara sitting cross-legged near the cave edge, her back turned to the exit. She was slightly slumped over, as though protecting something. Bakura considered this for a few moments, then scaled the length of the cliff in silence until he finally came to stand directly behind the girl.

"Hey," he said.

Kisara jumped to her feet, immediately recognizing the voice. "You're back," she said.

"Clearly," he drawled, setting the bags down, "or else I wouldn't be here. Now, what exactly were you doing while I was gone?"

The girl's eyes immediately locked onto her arm, if only for a fleeting moment, and she instinctively drew her arm nearer to herself. But she said, "Oh, no- nothing."

Bakura nodded affirmatively, then snatched her hand and held it aloft to see what she was hiding. Kisara winced as a new trail of blood trickled down a slash-like wound near her elbow, overriding older ones. "I see someone didn't listen to me when I told them that it was generally a bad idea to escape." he said, seemingly amused.

"I didn't try to escape," Kisara insisted, "I- I cut myself. While looking for something to eat."

"I'm sure you were. See here-" The thief held up her arm just a bit more so that he could indicate the cut with his free hand. "Judging by the shape of the gash, you found yourself a nice little desert outlaw, probably with one of those nice, new iron blades I keep hearing about from Kush. This one, though," He stopped to consider. "This one's pretty ragged for a blade like that. I'd say it was probably bent up a bit. A little chunk taken out. That'd do it. And I'm guessing by the amount of blood flow verses clotting that you got yourself this about- say, an hour and a half ago. I'm just taking a wild guess here, but I'd guess that this wasn't the first time you tried, either. You had to slowly bring up the courage to fully leave the cave, and by that time, they probably had a whole pack of bandits just waiting for you." He paused, as though for applause. "Well, how's that?"

Kisara blinked. She had no idea how Bakura could have assumed all that from a silly little cut. It didn't look all that significant to her. Just an ordinary gash was all. "How did you-"

"I happen to know a good deal about knife wounds." he said nonchalantly, "Just had a good lot of encounters with them." He paused, seemed to remember something for a moment, but brushed it off by changing the subject. "Right. So, if I were you, I wouldn't go trying to run off again like that. Or, at least, try to make it a little less obvious. Now, let's get that all bandaged up, and then we can eat." 

Kisara's ears pricked up at the prospect of food. She hadn't had food all day- in fact, hunger had been what motivated her to attempt to escape the second time. If it hadn't been for Diabound plucking her out of trouble, she would certainly have been dead. Then again, Bakura wouldn't so casually have let his hostage die, so naturally his ka would have come to her rescue.

The thief tore off some of the cloth of the sacks, wrapping them roughly around Kisara's arm like a makeshift bandage. She tensed up as he did this- naturally, she was uncomfortable being so close to her captor- but couldn't escape a relieved sigh when the bandage protected her wound from the tear of the wind. So as to seem polite and therefore remain on Bakura's good side, she murmured a quiet thank you.

"Ya, ya," he muttered, not wasting any time on her show of courtesy. He then went to preparing the meal for the both of them- plenty of bread, a good deal of food that had been salted a bit for preservation, plenty of chicken, some fruits that appeared foreign to Egypt, and- she cringed as this was brought out- beer. He handed her a decent share of the food, with something that went basically like, "Here. Food. Eat. All right?" 

They ate in a rather embarrassed silence. At least, it was embarrassing for Kisara. It didn't appear to her that Bakura was troubled by the quiet at all, but she had to keep glancing over at him warily just in case- well, she wasn't sure what quite was the case, but it had something to do with the beer. The thief seemed to down his first cupful of it, but that was about it.

But finally Bakura seemed to sense her gaze. "Oh, I suppose you'll be wanting some beer as well?" he said sarcastically, holding up a bottle. "Excuse me for taking you for a dainty little girl, then. Though," he added thoughtfully, "I don't imagine the stuff's all that good for one's ka- at least, it doesn't do it any good. So, regardless, I'm not going to give anything to you. All right?"

In the corner, the upper half of Diabound was watching the two eat with a grim look on his face. The snake half sighed and told him to stop being such a pansy.

"Actually," Kisara murmured, "No, I was just- Do you drink often?"

"Fairly often," Bakura estimated. "Though I'm not much for hangovers, really, so I don't drink a particularly large amount at any one time. I just always like to have a stash of it in case I need to reason with someone. Drunks are considerably easier to convince than those sober, you know. Now-" He stood up and began cleaning up the leftover chicken legs. "I hope you're satisfied with what you got because it's all you're getting for tonight. I spent the whole bleeding day looking for all this and I don't want to go out again anytime soon, so you are entirely at my mercy in that aspect. If I don't find us food, you starve."

Kisara admitted to not feeling particularly threatened by that fact. He couldn't let her die. He needed her ka. She swallowed hard, feeling suddenly ill. All that food she had stuffed herself with was only helping Bakura. As soon as he found a way to collect her ka, she would be lying, dead, in the desert before she could so much as blink. She winced a little at the thought.

The sun set over the vast desert, its last rays seeming to engulf the far-off city, as though smothering it with blood. Bakura settled down into his hammock but didn't seem to quite want to fall asleep yet. Kisara tried to stay awake as long as he did, in case he were to stab her in her sleep (even though common sense reminded her that she was his meal ticket), but fatigue finally claimed her, and she fell asleep.

  
  


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That chapter ended a lot like the last one. Hmm. I'm unhappy.

Hmph. Thief Bakura will be considerably less generous to Kisara from now on. I bet he's getting tired of trying to gain her trust.

  
  



	3. The Procession of the Hours

Anyway, that's my two cents on an entirely unrelated subject. In other, unrelated news, I'm planning a series of parodies on that little HTML banner thing with a little rainbow and "Marriage is love" under it. Because I hate it so. Too mushy. So far I've got "marriage is publicity," "marriage is obnoxious," (for my novel-in-progress which focuses on celebrities, reality verses idealism, and open-mindedness- we should all be open about other's views of issues such as religion, sexual preference, and giant robots-) "vive le arranged marriages!" (My friend's idea, who is sick of hearing nothing but love-related songs and romance fics.) And "screentone is love". Because screentones ARE love, I tell ya. Nothing beats screentones.

Excuse the lack of update! Current projects include getting my webcomic into some sort of engine that'll make it easier to update, hopefully without selling my soul to keenspace. My comic is Take Me To Your Captain, soon to be renamed, "Happy Tale of a Demon and his Boy". Stars Dark Bakura (I gives him a new name: Rekka Mnemosyne, or just M'emo...or Nemo in case I have to move to one of those places that only allows original comics...) It's here:

And the official Thief Bakura/Kisara not-so-mushy fanlisting, All Thieves Go to Heaven and featuring the heavenly song, Banditos. "...or we could talk it out over a cup o' Joe, and you could look deep into my eyes, like I was a supermodel. Uh huh.":

And my YGO fanfiction contest, whose deadline IS in July, thank you. I encourage you all to enter and ask for my help if you need it:

....other project: Getting into highschool (I got accepted into both private schools with honors, by the by. I think it was my overly cynical entrance exam essay. I wish I had an extra copy of them. I'm so proud of them.) and organizing a Monty Python skit for the Spring Show.

Really apologize for the gargantuous A/N. 

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The day began considerably earlier than Kisara had first intended, and hardly in a way that she would have intended. She woke up to utter darkness and a sharp pain in her gut. It must have woken her up. She sat there unblinkingly as her eyes adjusted, hoping that the pain would leave her. What was she to do otherwise?

And so she waited, praying that the pain might leave in one gruesome way or another, but to no avail. And after several minutes of this, she discovered the cause. Oh, please, she thought to herself, please not now. It's too soon.

I mean, I just had it a . . . month . . . ago. . . . Ohh. . . .

She moaned at this thought and writhed a bit. 

And thus was the problem. There was a certain sort of feminine-related pain that didn't really go away in the normal way that stomach pains would, and she knew she would have to ask for help soon. Suddenly she yearned for her younger sister, who had in all her blessings discovered a reliever to these sorts of things. 

Slowly she crawled over to Bakura's hammock, by now quite desperate. But what was she to say? He was, after all . . . a guy. And regardless of sexual preference, there were certain requirements in the way of sympathy in this particular situation that men . . . simply wouldn't work with.

Bakura's coat had slid a ways down, revealing his tanned and muscular shoulders. Kisara couldn't help but take pause for a moment at this, and she stood studying that revealed skin. The boy was so . . . so . . . what was the word for it . . . ?

Cerebellum, she confirmed groggily. Yes, that was the word for it. An odd occurrence, since that was hardly a word found in ancient Egypt. How she came up with it was a complete mystery to her, but, then again, she was feeling rather sickly, and her thoughts were prone to run wild.

"Bakura. . . ." she whispered, her fear of the man lessened by the urgency of her situation. Now the thief was, understandably, a light sleeper. It was certainly a necessity to be able to wake in the common event that someone was trying to hunt you down with a knife. This event, however, did not involve someone hunting him down with a knife, and because of this his subconscious deemed it an unnecessary interruption to his slumber and made him indeed very irritable upon waking.

"Wha- wait-, what is it, Kisara?" he said groggily, his face barely visible under his sleep-tangled mat of hair, his eyes all squinted from unwillingness to open.

"Bakura, my, uh. . . ." She paused for a moment to decide upon the correct wording for Bakura. "My stomach hurts."

The thief looked at once both astonished and annoyed. "And you woke me up just to tell me that, did you?"

"I- I-" Here she had to pause, for the sudden return of a particularly sharp pain in her gut caused her to moan again and her knees buckled momentarily. "Is there anything you could do to help? Please?"

And Bakura, to her amazement, seemed to consider this greatly for a moment, as though somewhere in his mind he really did care for her welfare. This was quite entirely false, by the way, but Kisara was quite one to hallucinate. "No." he said with a yawn. "Go lie down for a while. If you have to throw up, do it somewhere else. I don't want to wake up a cleaning job." And with this, he pulled up his robe past his shoulders and laid his head back down to rest, not to be roused again for the remainder of the night.

Kisara stood there for a good, long while, rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet. Now, more than ever, she was aware of how helpless and alone she was- interesting how cramps can bring about such awareness. She stared around for a long, long time, only stopping every once in a while to keel over and grimace. But after a while she figured-and this is a paraphrase, now-oh, screw this, and lay down decisively on the floor, face down, and refused to move the remainder of the night.

You can imagine the odd mixture of amusement and puzzlement on Bakura's face upon seeing this bizarre sight the next morning, for there she was, seemingly a large and long clump of silvery hair sprawled out on the floor in no orderly fashion, with two small feet sticking out at one end. He checked briefly to see if she was still breathing, and, confirming this, went away to forage for more food.

Kisara awoke shortly after to find Bakura gnawing absentmindedly on a loaf of bread-he didn't seem to acknowledge her existence, at least not yet. The sun was already quite far up, its rays sparkling in her eyes and the sand below. She wasn't so much in pain anymore- they rarely lasted more than the first day of her little monthly ordeal. Still, she curled herself up into a little ball, allowing the wind to blow the dirt out of her hair as it flowed out in front of her.

It was a while before she realized that Bakura had yet to take any interest in her. At first she believed this to be connected to her silence, but she later saw that he was indeed quite aware of her, yet chose to ignore her. She was to take food from the previous day's hoard for herself, though no doubt he was watching her from the corner of his eye to see that she did not take too much. 

Eventually her relief of being ignored turned to irritation, and she began to discreetly eavesdrop on exactly what he was doing. It really wasn't anything she couldn't have guessed on her own- he was planning a discrete return to the capital to retrieve the Millennium Ring, which was apparently something that would do him a considerable bit of good.

Whenever he spoke of the Ring, Diabound tended to slink into a corner and stay quiet.

"You do know that you're coming with me when I return to the city?" Bakura inquired casually, sometime that afternoon.

"What?" said Kisara, rather startled.

"It's a virtual invitation for you to escape," he said, a little put-off by her lack of enthusiasm. "Despite what I'm sure that bastard Set told you, I do actually honor those who deserve my respect. If, while in the city, you do manage to escape me, then you can do as you please. At least I actually acknowledge when it's my own fault for messing up on something."

Kisara would have been taken aback with this considerable offer had she not known him better. He would be giving her an unmeasurably outstanding opportunity with no reasonable advantage for him. Thing was that she knew it would be quite impossible to escape Bakura under any sensible conditions, and this was yet another attempt at gaining her trust.

Of course, not everything he did was for that purpose. It was indeed true that he seemed to consider a good few things to be below him, something Kisara could never have guessed before. Now that she thought about it, he really hadn't done a thing to harm her since he took her away from Set. He was a passive creature for the most part, but, then again, considering the situation, how could he be otherwise?

He hadn't killed or hurt her- but that was because killing would ruin the whole ransom idea, and hurting her might have resulted in a coma, and her ka would come and kill him. He couldn't really force her into some demented slavery because there wasn't anything he could order to do while keeping a low profile. Going anywhere outside the cave would result in her being cut up by one of the bandits outside, possibly resulting in coma, see problem one.

He couldn't- well, actually he -could- rape her, only he really didn't seem interested in the prospect. This had been her greatest fear upon arrival and she had, in response, checked for any signs of perversion, sexual innuendo, and general lustfulness, and was relieved if not greatly confused to find none. Bakura always seemed to be preoccupied with something or another, as though anything physical about Kisara were superfluous to anything he could possibly care for. She had observed a similar trait in Set. In fact, they also shared the rather laid back approach to life, the spiteful reproach toward the Pharaoh, their near neglect of their captives, and the idea that winning over her trust would certainly be a good thing.

But to think they were similar was a silly business. She might have laughed at the thought, had she the enthusiasm to do so. The comparison was not unlike something someone would think up between good and evil. Nice as a concept, but in all practical manner she would never find the knowledge necessary. After all, had it not been Set, not Bakura, who had saved her life and gained- effectively- her trust?

But for all his obscurities, Bakura, in his natural state, was prone to attracting the attention of Kisara, especially when jotting down notes on what was presumably his revenge attack on the government. She was not entirely sure why this concept was so fascinating to her at the start, in fact, for a very long time she still puzzled over the fact. It was only presently that she realized, with a start, that what had been attracting her concerns for so long was in fact that Bakura could read. And not only that, but write as well.

This amazed her greatly. No one she had known in her youth had been able to write. Not even Set could- and this had bothered the priest greatly, mind you. Akunadin- who had been, for the most part, his overseer and guardian- had not approved of the idea of royalty toiling over labor that could be easily done by servants. He had, as of late, been attempting to sneak self-taught lessons to himself, but until he could achieve full literacy, he was slave to his personal scribe, to whom he spent at least one hour a day dictating this and that.

Learning to become a scribe meant a dawn-to-dusk day of sitting in a stuffy adobe room in a class that didn't come cheap for years-on-end. It was more of an investment for the distant future than an apprenticeship. And thus it made absolutely no sense that Bakura could know how to write. And teaching one's self took dedicated time, effort, and a certain amount of genius that she was quite sure Bakura lacked. She could not accept it.

Of course, she couldn't generally accept anything about him, anyway.

This may sound rather blunt and sudden, but it did so happen that Bakura discovered a cave in his hideout. Now, I know it's not very usual for someone to miss something as large as a cave, but when things are hidden, things like that happen. It wasn't really his doing that had found the cave, either. It had just so happened that he had finally figured out some method by which to order his captive around, that of instructing her grouchily to pick up a bucket of water and carry it over to the other side of the cave- he was getting desperate- and she had tripped and spilled most of it onto Diabound. It had been the snake half that had been splashed, but the human half, so startled by the sudden movement, retreated suddenly- as in retreated most of his arm into the wall, which just happened to be hallow. And all this could've happened quite without Bakura noticing had not a large chunk of rock hit him on the head in the process.

It was at this point that he took some actual interest in the prospect, and commanded that the wall be beat down until the cavity inside became easily accessible, a command that Diabound carried out with great ease.

Now, Bakura was actually quite something for such exploratory movements as spelunking. He was known- or rather, he knew himself- for taking up a few bizarre, solitary habits. Generally ones in deserted places that absolutely no one else did. He enjoyed his little pastimes greatly, and when he did something he enjoyed, he tended to forget certain things, like the fact that Kisara was standing there, with absolutely no idea of what to do. Fear of scolding made her follow him in, and he made no remark to her as she did this.

"This is new," Bakura murmured, running his fingers along the cave wall. "Very new. Someone must've forced a cave in. This definitely wasn't blocked off originally." Kisara made no effort to answer. When Bakura talked to himself, he didn't like anyone else butting in on the conversation. Kisara, silly girl that she was, really couldn't see anything all that special about the cave. But apparently Bakura did. He ran his fingers along the wall, examining the minerals that made it up, picking up some unfathomable information from it.

They went on for a while in silence (this was at least partially attributed to the fact that Diabound was too large to fit, regardless of whether he was traveling in a physical form or not) until they at length came to a small crevice that seemed to say, All right, we're all done here, go home, although there was a good deal of cave left to explore. At least, it was at this point that Bakura stopped entirely to examine the wall even more closely than before.

"A warning." he muttered, tapping his finger against the stone. "Fairly customary. Tends to scare away the little children. Not that there's anything actually the-" But he was cut short by the thing that wasn't actually there, which let out a low but piercing screech.

"Oh," said Bakura, staring down the rather large guardian beast that had materialized a few feet away from him, and did another thing he knew how to do fairly well- he ran. If he could just get the beast to follow him through the entrance, he reasoned, it would be within Diabound's range. This would, of course, require that he himself be out of range, which would generally require his hostage be out of range as well, which, as he realized with a start, she was not.

She was indeed standing right where he had left her, no, had fallen prostrate at the feet of the giant beast, looking quite pathetic, if not entirely dead.

Bakura screamed in frustration. "That girl has no instincts!" he raved, "No wonder she keeps getting stoned by those people!" And he ran back to get her, just as the great beast was leaning down, snapping its beak-

And then he saw it. A huge, winged dragon, blindingly white and beautiful. It seemed far too large to fit inside the cramped cave, and yet it did, and with a smooth elegance that seemed unfit for any living creature. It thrashed its tail and roared, keeping its wings and hind legs protectively over its master.

Bakura took the hint and hid behind the nearest rock, fully aware of what would happen if it turned around and saw him.

The Blue Eyes White Dragon, however, seemed preoccupied enough with its original target enough not to notice him. It effortlessly blew apart the beast and watched it shrivel back into the rock, then nudged Kisara lovingly to make sure she was all right. Seeing as she was, it folded its wings and faded away, leaving a magical silence that left the great and notorious thief lord in awe. It also left Diabound in awe, but of quite a different sort entirely.

Bakura soon went to pick up Kisara's small, fallen form. She was quite entirely unconscious, with no apparent intention of waking up for at least an hour. He came out of the cave rather awkwardly to a scowling snake.

"Perdy . . . she-dwagon. . . ." the human half was saying, staring off into nothingness. In his little Ka mind, little images of hearts and dragons were flying about in his mind.

"Oh, just shut up!" snapped the snake.

Bakura did not inquire further into the matter.

Kisara awoke as the sun was setting with only a vague recollection of the matters of the preceding events. She'd been dreaming for a while, and the headache-inducing rays of the sun were something of an unwelcome comfort.

She'd been having this one dream for a while now- it was not of an unpleasant sort, and in that way she often took refuge in it, let it wrap around her like the warm blankets she'd had back home. It was a strange dream- she was a grey landscape, grey as in the hour just before dawn, and yet the sun never rose. That place had stopped, frozen forever in that hour before daylight. It felt tranquil, yet sad.

Sometimes she could see further, and there were trees, black and barren trees littered about, devoid of all growth, yet they seemed not to be foreboding to her, she feared them not. And sometimes, sometimes in the midst of all this, she could see glimmers of gold hanging from the branches, but she dared not touch them, and she always woke up before she could find what they were.

She couldn't quite figure what it meant. She looked up and saw Bakura, gazing casually off into the distant horizon, into the city, no doubt. She noticed Diabound, who had a curious look about his human face. She wondered briefly if her Ka had tried to attack him.

She wasn't really sure- she wrapped her arms around herself as night enveloped the area. The moon was bright that night, and the stars cast their smiling gazes at her. She almost wanted to smile back, but she found she could not, not quite.

After a time, she looked back at Bakura. He was at that point staring at nothing in particular, a point on the ceiling, perhaps, but nothing more.

There was a curious look about him, too, but she didn't think it was about her Ka.

Somehow it seemed too grim for that.

_____________________________________________________________________

Me begin symbolic pattern with the way I close all the chapters to this fic. There are also other clues, too. Can you see them?

Current awards won by this fic:

The "Worst Pairing Ever With an Interesting Plot" trophy

The "For a Second I Thought You'd Sold Out, But You Made This Pairing Actually Make Sense, Hooray!" trophy

As for how Atemu died....well, use your imagination. He fell down the pit-like-thing and then the big Monty Python foot of wonderfulness smushed him like a bug, okay?

And I'm slightly disturbed by this creature called 'Melody.' Hugs and kisses for the review, but I somehow think you missed the concept that this is The One Pairing To Defend Against the Mushy and Romantic. 

Oh. My God. Excuse the extra-longlong AN, but you people have to see this:

For those far too superior to the average human being to see this completely hilariously inaccurate site, I quote it:

"Kisara/Yami Bakura (-I don't know much about this couple, but a couple weirdos thought that she and Bakura had a past relationship. Bzzzt. Wrong.)" 

Ordinarily, I would be laughing my head off at this, but it turns off the entire site is a joke-site . . . which, ironically, makes it suddenly very un-funny to me. I just think the person handled the irony and sarcasm in the wrong way. Also, judging by the rest of the content, this would suggest that thief Bakura/Kisara IS canon. And that pisses me off. 


	4. A Worrisome Journey for Kisara

You know, Charles Dickens wrote Nicholas Nickleby as a weekly serial, just like I'm writing this fanfiction. I think it's a useful tactic-sometimes having to write a whole book without knowing who you're writing for is unearthly discouraging, hence why it's a lot easier to write this fanfiction than my novels... 'Course, to put them out on fictionpress would scrap that first copyright law for publishing.

If anyone gives a care . . . I could use someone to read the progress of the first draft of my novel by email or something private as such. It would really help. I'd feel more need to get chapters out.

The designated day to travel the city promised to be an exciting one, a promise not broken by the events of the early morning. Kisara, having awoken from that odd dream once again, found Bakura absent from her presence, and guessed that he must have gone back o the cave, in the absence of horrendous monsters.

Having absolutely nothing to do to possess her time, she sat by the cave's mouth and waited for him. For a moment she considered going in to see the full length of the cave herself, but decided against it. She was still frazzled from her ka's recent appearance in the previous chapter, and felt hardly prepared for another ordeal. This perturbed her slightly, knowing that, for at least a short while, Bakura had no incentive to act kindly to her as a means of self preservation. A slight fear leapt within her at this, a happening that was swiftly answered by a dog.

A dog, yes- it came trotting out the cave with its shaggy golden fur and smartly curved tail, and it regarded her with a look of dignified contempt, an expression that reminded her insistently of someone . . .

She met its stare in blank disbelief, and a wonderful, impossible idea crept into her mind. "Ba . . . Bakura?" she said hesitantly, squinting as though in hopes of seeing past his new canine identity.

"What is it?" came the prompt reply. It seemed to have a bit of an echoing ring to it, as though it weren't actually there.

"Bakura!" she shrieked, taken suddenly aback at the confirmation of her hypothesis. "Wha . . . what happened to you?"

"Nothing much," the thief returned in a casual drawl, and she noted that the eeriness of his voice seemed to have reduced greatly in this last moment. Curiously, she tilted her head to the side and found that she heard a swift patter of footsteps, and moments later Bakura emerged, fully human, from the cave as well, apparently just as frazzled about their new animal friend as Kisara was. She looked between the two and realized with some amusement that it was not really the dog who looked like the thief, but rather Bakura who possessed a bit of an uncanny canine attribute about his face.

The dog trotted over to Diabound, half of which rejected him with a show of fangs and the remaining half of which welcomed him with a warm and encouraging smile. The dog succumbed to the human half's gentle yet clumsy shows of affection in hopes of recruiting from him some sort of delectable nourishment. 

"Strange," mused Bakura, "I found him wandering about in there. Seems like he'd have to have been in there for months, even if that doesn't make any sense. Must be some sort of food stash in there he's been stealing from all this time, I'll be off looking for it when we get back. Diabound!" he called, turning his attention suddenly towards his ka. "That'll be enough of that, before you kill the poor bastard. Now, hurry up. I told you to get ready two hours ago, and I'll be damned if you've so much as moved from the spot. Considering that I woke up before daylight today, I would find it MOST convenient if we could reach the city before nightfall, thank you."

The human Diabound cast a pleading glance at Kisara, as though expecting her to explain to him what a dreadful thing it might have been to move from his sleeping place and arouse a lady, but having no idea how to speak to the thief king under such circumstances, she mutely shrugged off the responsibility.

Gradually, Diabound put his master's orders in to action (though the human half only with the certain assurance that the dog would still be there when they returned), and within the time frame of five minutes Bakura declared the mission ready to commence.

Kisara was about to inquire as to exactly how they were going to get there but found her question already answered.

"Over here," Bakura called to her, though Kisara found it impossible to come 'over here' as Bakura had already grabbed her arm and pulled her over there. From 'there' he hoisted her up onto Diabound's back- the human half had bent over considerably to make this a relatively simple task- and instructed that she manage the rest of the way up until she came to rest on the monster's shoulder.

This would have been perfectly fine and well with Kisara had not Bakura given her an extra push upward by the rump while saying this. Now, given the thief's preceding interactions with Kisara, which could be considered certainly clean, if not neglectful, one might consider the fact that he had done this with no true intention of being touchy, but Kisara's heart pounded with sharp, writhing fear regardless.

Hence why Bakura's curiosity was occupied for a good while when, in climbing up to occupy a seat near his captive, he found Kisara staring, terrified, at him out of the corner of her eye, as a deer in the headlights.

"What's wrong with you, girl?" he snapped, as though her stare was a liberating gesture that had to be put down immediately.

Kisara, unaware of just how vulnerable she appeared at that moment, squeaked and said, "Oh . . . just . . . something in my eye is all." At which point she turned away, apparently unaware that Bakura knew she was still looking at him, though subtly. 

It was clear to her that Bakura was not convinced, but he dropped the subject and made a sharp call out to Diabound who, upon hearing this, hoisted himself into the sky, spreading his numerous sets of wings as he did so.

Presently, the human half gave a little distressed groan.

"He says he doesn't like you clinging onto us like that," interpreted the snake, who, not being in the process of flying or keeping two passengers upright, eyed Kisara disapprovingly as she dug her nails into the human ka's shoulder flesh in fright. "And frankly," he added, "I don't, either."

Not wanting to put Diabound in any uncalled-for harm, she attempted to release her hands, but found a fear of heights mixed with the impending doom of falling far too much, and found herself clinging to the ka's white skin once again.

Bakura groaned. "This," he assured her, "is the reason you keep getting attacked, isn't it? You make it bloody easy for them." Kisara was not really sure what to say of this. "Listen," Bakura continued, "for the sake of my ka . . . This is pathetic." Having said this, he put his arm around her to stabilize her.

This did not only help her let go of Diabound, but it also kept her from making nearly any movement at all. He's touching me, she thought. And this thought nearly automatically translated into, He's going to rape me.

As with the rump incident occurring previously, Bakura appeared to either ignore or become totally unaware of the nature of his actions. And as usual, this was partially due to the fact that he was plenty preoccupied with other matters.

"You really seem to be recovering from that wing injury," Bakura commented casually, casting a sideways glance toward Diabound. His ka said nothing, but somehow this seemed to be taken as a thank you.

"Yes," continued Bakura, "you just seem able to fly higher and . . . higher . . . and higher . . ."

There was a short pause, during which a think layer of clouds passed below them.

"Diabound, just how HIGH do you intend to go?"

The human half blurted out something that Kisara, and almost definitely Bakura as well, could not understand, so the snake translated. "He says just a little higher," he shouted. "Just in case of some other flying ka."

Bakura sighed. "Fine, but if you go any higher you'll cause a solar eclipse. Plus, it's getting hard to breathe up here."

There was a short silence as Diabound reached his cruising altitude. Kisara really had no intention of breaking the silence as she was plenty preoccupied with not collapsing for the collective fear of Bakura and the wind. 

Diabound seemed to sense her tenseness. Drifting up until he was level with her, the snake half cocked his head to the side with a curious little expression of something that might have been sympathy (it was hard to tell, really). "You look right pathetic, love," he observed.

"Diabound. . . ." cautioned Bakura.

"Oh, shut up, Bakura. Bet you need something to cheer you up there, dear." He paused to shout up something to the other half of himself. "Hey, Diabound, do your Lenny impression for the lady, would'ya?"

"Oh, for gods' sakes. . . !"

"Bakura, keep out of this. Whad'ya say, girl? How'd you like that?"

Kisara didn't answer. Diabound would be terribly distressed to hear that his attempt to cheer her up was really having the opposite effect.

The human half of Diabound succumbed to its other half's orders, and adjusted its flight patterns so that it could shift its position slightly without averting or blocking coming updrafts. Then, lifting up one of its arms just enough so as to not disturb his two passengers, he brought his great hand above the two of them (effectively blocking out the sun). The arm around Kisara tightened slightly. To see what he was doing, she had to tilt her head considerably upwards, just in time to see the hand come gently down on her captor's head.

"Can I pet the rabbit, George?" said the human half of Diabound in his deep, friendly voice. "Can I, George? Can I pet the rabbit?" He stroked Bakura's hair affectionately as though he were a small mouse in his hand.

Bakura had gone quite red, and it was only after a second of this that he had enough. "Oh, shut up!" he snapped, slapping his ka's hand away and ruffling his hair back into a reasonable arrangement. 

Diabound seemed slightly hurt that Kisara seemed unaffected by his performance, and a relentless wave of guilt passed over her. She felt sorry for the poor ka, having such a seemingly humorless owner. If she had even the remotest of strengths to stand up against him, she certainly would have told him off for it, if she told him off for anything.

But as if fairly obvious, she was in no such position to protest any of his actions. The extent of her power lay in her ability to not chuckle slightly at the expression on Bakura's face when he was petted. But even that was but a momentary relief from the penetrating fear of the man.

A sudden, petrifying (if it was possible to petrify her further) thought wriggled her way into her brain. It was not so much a disturbing one as an eerily contemplative one, and it caused her to take a considerable pause. And the thought was this: What was it, really, that caused her to fear Bakura so much? It seemed silly at first. Why! if she could only count the ways. Highest of all being his open treachery against the Pharaoh, he and his great ka-

Who was currently doing curious impressions to cheer her up. This prospect gave her the first warm feeling she had felt in days, deep down in her breast so that even the howling wind could not penetrate it (though it was penetrating most everything else). How, she wondered (and surely she had wondered this many times before), could someone (thing?) So gentle in appearance be known for such terrible things?

There was a certain paradox to this fact (was it called a paradox? Kisara could easily admit to having not been raised in so formal a society as to understand much of such words.) Although his ka appeared greatly softened with Kisara, his owner showed no such affection. She had taken it for granted that such a villain would be incapable of such loving emotions, and she was probably right. Still, he was not so hostile as to deserve a significant amount of fear from her, so why did he . . . ?

Well, his past crimes, of course, answered another part of her. Just look at all he's done! Slaughtered all those people!

. . . of course, she hadn't actually seen any of this, but she had taken what she heard indirectly from Set to be fact. 

Perhaps it was boredom, perhaps it was something else, but, well- something inside of her made her question. Why fear Bakura, and not Set? They had both- and in Set's case she admitted this to herself grudgingly- They had both kept her purely for the purpose of using her, and they both had something of a black record. Though surely Bakura's was blacker, was it not?

But was deceiving and showing false loyalty truly better than out and committing the deed, especially when you were, at some later date, fully prepared to betray, to slaughter, to do everything Bakura had done and worse? Could it not be considered cowardly to do so, and, to some extent, brave to oppose a greater force openly, as Bakura had done? And, when and if Set would revolt, would he not be denounced, denied of having ever been part of the circle of priests, condemned to the second death in writing? Set would be the monster, the most terrifying demon to ever have walked the earth, Bakura's abominations would seem insignificant in the eyes of the royal . . . and when Set died, erased from all records. The priests would not want to let anyone remember that they had been fooled by him. He would not exist, he would never have existed. [1]

She blinked rapidly, not at all fond at the direction this train of thought was leading her. She let it be, but kept it in the back of her mind. She felt herself relax slightly, and the arm around her didn't seem quite as unbearable.

The dark mass that was the city grew larger as the minutes wore on, but just as they were nearly upon it, Diabound slowed his pace, coming as close to a still hover as his wings could muster.

"Diabound," cautioned Bakura. "You can bring us down now. Make it nice and gradual. Not to dynamic." (Diabound began preparing for a nose dive.) "Diabound. Diabound! I know what you're thinking. Don't you dare even consider-" But apparently he did consider, for even before his master could finish the sentence, Diabound flung his wings straight up into the air. The result was not unlike applying a particularly large boulder to a parachuter. He plunged straight down and, after a few milliseconds of inertia-induced doubt, the two passengers followed suit.

Kisara was screaming, screaming, falling helplessly through the air a few yards above Bakura. She tried to catch hold of something, anything to keep her from falling, but it was of course useless.

I'm going to die, she thought, I'll die and it wouldn't even have been Bakura's fault, but I'm going to die, I'm going to die and thank the gods I remembered to put on my underwear this morning, I hope no one below's peeping.

And then with a sudden thump, it was over. Apparently Diabound had caught the both of them, pleased with the result of his mischief.

"Diabound." said Bakura, appearing to be quite collected so as to hide the fact that he was quite frazzled over the whole matter. He contemplated something to say, but recalling that any physical harm made to Diabound would also effect him, he found no threat suitable. Needless to say, there was a certain air of defiance about the ka, yet again entirely contradicting what Kisara had heard about during the great battles.

She took this defiance for commonplace mischievousness.

Bakura, who having effectively been rendered into a more foul mood by this prank, ordered that he and his captive be put down at once, and that Diabound had best make himself scarce before he changed his mind about no hurting him.

She took this to be a shallow threat.

"Bakura," she whispered in the most self-denouncing, respectful manner she had ever known, "excuse me, but why are we stopping here?"

"What do you think, stupid girl?" scoffed the thief, "You think no one will recognize the great ka of their enemy? They're stupid, but they're not that stupid." And at that he whistled off into the distance. Kisara looked around briefly in hopes of discovering the purpose of such an act and caught what it was almost immediately- appearing from a think cloud of sand was a beautiful, dark horse, approaching at a speed she thought not possible. Within seconds it was beside Bakura, a look of calmness if not contentment coming about it as he stroked its mane and neck with a certain affinity that was quite becoming of him. 

"Is that . . ." Kisara asked slowly, and thought the question was directed at Bakura, she intended it for Diabound, "the one you stole? From the palace, that is. During the battles. . . ."

"Nah," replied the snake, "This one's much prettier. Didn't do any commandeering to get it, either. The boy has a way with animals, you know."

Judging by Bakura's expression, the force of the compliment was overrun considerably by the concept of being talked about behind your own back. "Diabound," he snapped, "would you kindly terminate your pleasant little conversation with the girl? Some of us have work to do." Diabound glared but slowly faded into nothingness as he was told. Having that finished, Bakura addressed Kisara. "Come over here." he said.

I am sure you are tired of hearing this, but Kisara's fears of rape flared up in her anew- again. But again she felt that she could not resist his command.

"Have you ever ridden a horse?" he asked.

"Ah . . ." Kisara blinked in embarrassment. "Na . . . no, actually. . . ."

"Supposed as much." he sighed. "You've got 'fragile' written all over you, like one of those boxes with expensive wine cups."

"Oh?" Kisara said this particularly quietly, in hopes of pattering out the conversation.

"Obnoxiously so." continued the thief, in a matter-of-factly manner. "It's no wonder you're always getting beaten up like- look, if you can't get up on the horse yourself, don't insult her by just flailing about like that." Kisara braced herself for his touch, remembering the little helping hand she had received previously. She was only slightly relieved that he gripped her by the waist this time, hoisting her up near the back end of the horse and mounting after her with the grace of some great wildcat. From there he shifted slightly to look back at her. "And I suppose I'll have to give you lessons as to how to stay on a horse as well?"

"Oh . . ." she looked down, thoroughly uneasy at having to withstand his gaze. "No . . . I understand that."

"Thank the gods." He paused for a second. Then, "Grab hold of my waist."

"What?" blurted Kisara, starting suddenly.

"Just hold on so you don't fall bloody off." There was a definite sense of growing annoyance about him. "Good gods, girl, what is wrong with you?"

"Ah. . . ." she said, still averting her eyes, "I. . . . I . . ."

"Oh, come on," he groaned, "It's not that difficult of a question." He looked over to his ka. "Would you look at this, Diabound? Bloody obnoxious. Bet you're glad you don't have to deal with lady kas, eh?" Bakura seemed to think this to be a terribly clever thing to say, but Diabound, quite evidently, did not. Seeing this, he abandoned the line of thought and went back to pressuring Kisara into an answer.

"I, um . . ." she murmured, "I . . . don't think there's anything wrong with me. . . ."

"You don't say?" He turned his head to Diabound in a rather bemused fashion. "I do believe that one of our number is in a bit of denial, don't you agree?" he mused. Diabound nodded in affirmation, but it a way so as to suggest that the person in question was not Kisara at all. "Listen, girl," he continued, "if you'll excuse my concern, I would much prefer a confirmation that you can indeed defend yourself in the presence of offenders should the need arise. I'm not going to let you remain as some inconvenience whom I must watch every fleeting second to make sure you're not killed, much less run off. Why, if that were the case, I daresay it would have been much simpler to leave you back at the cave, hmm?"

Kisara knew what he was suggesting, and she knew what sort of mood he would be in if he had to hold to his word and take her all the way back, losing a great deal of time on his part. "I'm sorry," she said, looking down, "but I can't."

"Can't?" repeated Bakura, in a way that made the word sound impossibly foolish. "Can't what, dare I ask? Come now, surely it is no great dishonor to be asked a simple question. That is, unless I am so terribly inferior to Set that you are ashamed to look at me."

Kisara squeezed her eyes shut for a long moment, then directed her gaze straight into her captor's eyes, and for a second she was surprised. The terrible thought of his demon eyes seemed enough to blind her, so that his actual gaze seemed not to frighten her as much. They were no particular color, she noted, yet still well-saturated in whatever hue they were. They were also thin and narrow, which above all seemed to inflict upon him a demonic appearance- such unusual shaping seemed surely foreign, though she herself having blue eyes and pale skin, she was not one to complain about something looking foreign. Their clearest blemish was, of course, the long scar that ran from his brow to his cheek on his right eye, though there were a good deal insignificant scrapes and cuts that were inevitable in the thieving business. Perhaps it was these scars that made his appearance more human, it showed that he was not immortal, not some great demon. And though it was unlikely, the thought that he was not invincible gave Kisara some sense of lightness in her heart.

All these realizations she experienced in a split second, and these were soon replaced by her intimate fear for the man. She struggled to keep her gaze, but seeing his slightly bemused but moreover scornful look about him, she felt a small fragment of her fear turn to anger. "I beg your mercy," she pleaded, "but I am not one so strong as you. I am weak- I find no use in trying to hide it. Surely you cannot expect the same standards from everyone that you expect from yourself-you do not know what it is like to face such discrimination!" And at this point she clapped a hand to her mouth, for this was boldness by Kisara's standards, boldness too strong for the situation. 

Bakura's expression was quite unreadable, but he flicked his white mane of hair so as to suggest his point. "Oh I don't, do I?" he asked, seemingly amused. "Or is it that I am one not to make it so glaringly obvious?" And he said no more on the subject, issuing the horse forward into a calm walk, which startled Kisara into silence. With another clucking noise, the horse accelerated into a trot, which gave her an unnerving feeling of falling off as well as an unpleasant one to her already-abused-for-the-day bum. A whimpering, sniveling sound escaped her lips, and she was sure she must have gone more pale than usual. The noise from her throat grew louder, and it wasn't very long before Bakura addressed it.

"A vital rule," he barked, "is that if you can't so much as defend yourself, then at least keep your bloody mouth shut." Kisara let out a final little cry and clenched her teeth to keep herself quiet. "And hold on tight so you don't fall off, I'm not slowing down just for you." He seemed to wait a few seconds for this to sink in to her, then with one movement forced the horse into a flat-out gallop.

Kisara was frozen with fear. With that first thrust she felt as if she were being thrown forward and would surely go flying off at any moment. There was, at least, not the awkward thumping that had come from trotting, but she found herself desperately clinging onto whatever she could- in this case, Bakura. It was hard to say how long they rode- probably an hour, at least, so that the sun had shirked off to the East a bit by the time she saw the city gates approaching- and oh, how she had longed to see those great doors, to at least return to a captivity she was more accustomed to. She had prayed for it feverishly, dreamt of it endlessly in her sleep-

Oh, wait a minute, no she hadn't. She'd been having that odd dream about trees and grayness before dawn- the thought of it sobered her for any fanciful thoughts of being rescued for the day. What did it mean? She had never once been there before, so surely it was not some daunting memory of her past. In all honesty she had experienced a perfectly lovely childhood, right up until she had entered the city. In any event, there was certainly no business with these trees. Though this time she seemed to recall something more- a shimmer on the trees, draping from them. She had tried to figure out what they were, but she had to give up.

Bakura dismounted the horse and petted it affectionately, apparently expecting Kisara to be able to come down by herself. She managed- well, frankly, fell off, but managed to get back up in something resembling composure. 

"It's not even dark out yet," observed Bakura, squinting so as to observe the position of the sun. "I really ought to give you more credit." Kisara was puzzled about this statement until she realized that he was talking to the horse. "Well," he continued with a sigh, "There's only one thing to do while we wait." And leaving no opportunity for Kisara to fret over what that one thing might be, he curled up next to a large stone and fell asleep.

[1] Whoops, sorry, 1984 lapse there. God, that's a bloody depressing book. Whoever bitches that omg all books have happy endings!!!!!1 my book is so realistic because every1 dies and it's a sad ending omg im a rebel!!!!!1 (not to mention any.... Cirque du Freak) has much Orwell to read. And lots of stuff to read, come to think of it. The world needs more happy endings. goes off to read Jane Austen and happyhappy British humor (humour?) books 

  
  



	5. What Did Happen There

Kisara was infinitely taken aback at how easily her captor could take to rest. She certainly couldn't. But there he was, seeming as peaceful as ever, dreaming of hell knows what.

"He'll only be sleeping an hour or so," observed Diabound, the snake half to the human half. "Hasn't taken his medicines for a bit, has he?" Kisara pricked up her ears as the human half shook his head in confirmation.

"Oh?" echoed Kisara. In her experience, medicine was the polite diction for some form of alcohol. Having eventually managed to accept in her mind (even if she couldn't figure out why) that Bakura wasn't much for drinking, this came as a rather large shock, even if it was only for health purposes. "I didn't know he–ah–"

"It's just to put him to sleep," explained the snake, in a slightly defensive manner, "though he does take quite a lot of it."

"Oh," she said quietly, "I've heard about that . . . people who can't get to sleep when they're supposed to."

"Something like that," said Diabound with an odd smile.

"That's . . ." She paused, unsure of exactly how to respond. She was never sure how kas really were supposed to feel for their masters. Having never personally seen hers before, she wouldn't have known. Though, really, she'd never seen any ka remaining visible besides in battle. After all, they did rather stick out. Yet Diabound showed no real intention of buggering off.

"I'm very sorry." she said finally.

"Ah, it's okay." the serpent smiled slightly. "There are worse things than a little sleeping disorder, aren't there?" He looked up to his other half for confirmation. The human half nodded, then opened his mouth as if to elaborate on what those worse things were, but a glare from the snake silenced him. "Actually, it's a bit odd. . . ."

Kisara blinked. "Ah excuse me, but what's odd?" she asked.

"Oh, nothing really just that sleep medicine can't be all that good for him, can it?" The snake flicked out its tongue, looking over inquisitively to its other half. "I mean, he's not much for drinking, after all. . ."

"He's alcohol intolerant?" guessed Kisara, rather taken aback.

"Apparently. 'Least, that's what he says." Diabound shifted slightly against the rock Bakura was rather peacefully nuzzled against, coiling a protective ring around him as he had done during battles. While this was a considerable defense when a threat was already revealed, at the moment it looked more like the snake had made a sort of makeshift bull's eye around him instead. "Can't confirm it, but I do know most of his family can't have it. It was this one time after a particularly good harvest season . . . most of his village had gone to the city market and had made quite a profit, and were able to buy a single wine bottle which, mind, was a really big thing for a community so small and secluded like them quite, quite small, in fact. Couldn't have been more than ninety nine of them,I must say . . . lovely powerful kas you saw from that villages, but not many people. . . ."

"Very . . . small. . . ." cooed the human Diabound, stroking a patch of air that apparently was to represent the little dog he had taken heart to back at the cave.

"Right," the snake continued, "Well, anyway so they had this wine, and they threw a post harvest celebration in honor of it, during which time everyone would get a taste of this expensive, new wine. I...don't believe Bakura ever got to tasting it personally his siblings started to take the hint after all the adults had to be rushed off to the village healer for . . . what was it called? Exorsism heh. . . ."

Kisara smiled, if fleetingly. She seemed to come to the curious realization a realization that would remain in her memory for years to come that at that moment she was actually enjoying being kidnapped. It was quite an odd sensation, but in the presence of Diabound it was a feeling that was difficult to deny.

"How . . . old was Bakura then?" she said, without giving her words much thought.

"Hmm? Well, I . . . I'd say no more than five years of age. Why do you ask?"

"Oh, I . . ." She paused, realizing how silly her reasoning really was. "Oh, it's just this must sound stupid to you, but I just can't imagine Bakura having ever settled down to live with other people, growing up in a manner so similar to how I did. . . . honestly, I can't imagine him ever having been a child. . . ."

"Most people these days can't." said the snake with a knowing smile, though it seemed tainted somehow. Kisara smiled apoligetically, in anticipation that her commenting might have caused him even the slightest woes.

After this, Diabound settled down for a short rest, insisting that doing so was not so much resting up as 'practice for what I'm probably going to be doing all night, unless Bakura insists otherwise.' Kisara, not wanting to disturb him, crept over to the rock and sat as far away from Bakura as possible, hugging her legs. The desert seemed oddly quiet as a peaceful gust of wind blew through her hair in a subtle manner that, she reckoned, could easily drive a man crazy when carried on long enough. A little, apparently flightless bird trotted along, stopped, gave Kisara an inquisitive glance, then trotted on. She watched its waddling, yellow form shrink off into the distance, and odd, strangely contemplative thoughts began to swirl around her again. She doubted that really had anything to do with the bird, mind, but it happened just the same.

Her considerings brought her back to her home, far, far from the cities where people would hate someone for the lightness of their skin or the saturation of their eyes. Her village had been deep down underground, where there was no light to taint her bloodline's sensitive skin and where the world above ground was where all fairytales and mysterious mishaps took place in the minds of young children.

She missed living there.

Now, as though she were a low flying sparrow swooping through the maze of tunnels on a grand tour of her childhood, she saw all her sisters and herself, gathered around a low stone table over a deck of cards. There were two others, one who was four years her senior, and the other quite nearly her twin in everything except composure. Kisara had always come off as the shy and timid one, so entirely unlike the others that she became the subject of many an analogy and joke. she smiled and to think that either one of her siblings would be so jealous of her, and for being kidnapped, no less! They were so much braver and outspoken than she was, always talking of running off to the upper world and picking up men from the first bar they encountered, getting wicked drunk and not giving a damn what the aftermath would be.

Kisara just wanted to stay at home and be a house wife for a nice young boy who would win her heart by bringing her flowers and singing (off key or on key, it really didn't matter) to her when she appeared on her balcony. She still feared for her sisters' well-being. Everyone she remembered where she lived were all happily married, mostly to their first loves. She couldn't help but question what her family's reputation would be if one of their number had rashly flew off to marry a drunk based upon how hot they were.

For a short time she actually considered that at any moment, her sisters might come crashing in and attempt to rape Bakura. But luckily it was at that moment that he chose to wake up- a complicated procedure that involved shaking out all the dirt from his hair and getting it all over his robes, then getting pissed at how dirty his clothes were.

"Diabound!" he shouted, pounding the great ka repeatedly on the snake skin. "You bloody– lazy– bastard, get up!"

"Now, now, Bakura. . . ." snorted the snake, in a not quite sober fashion. "You know as well as I do that the only possible way for a ka to be a bastard would be for his master to be born out of wedlock, so any such insult would apply just as much to you. . . ."

"I don't _care!_ Just get up before we're late!"

Well, this was nothing out of the usual, thought Kisara.

Bakura paused in his argument with his ka to address her. "Why are you still here?" he asked.

Kisara blinked. "Huh?" she squeaked.

"I gave you over an hour for a head start. Why haven't you run off and reported me yet?"

"Oh. . . ." She looked down, blushing profusely. "I. . . didn't think I was allowed to. . . ." She realized she really had no cause to be embarrassed, but found herself as such anyway. Now that she had to say it out loud, it all sounded immensely stupid.

"Weird," he muttered, somehow making the remark sound like a formidable oath. "Well, get off, then. Just as well give you a few minutes' start, otherwise it wouldn't be fun for me at all, go on."

It suddenly occurred to Kisara that Bakura was not even considering the fact that she would get away. The whole business of bringing her along was simply entertainment for him- of course. He must've gotten extremely tired of sitting around, doing nothing, having to be civil to a little reject of society. And yet she obeyed, for fear of angering him. She felt utterly vulnerable, trotting along ahead of him to the gigantic entrance of the city.

And then, into the marketplace. It was during this transition between dusk and night that the men in trade- or, at least, the more respectable of the trades- migrated out, and the night folk dispersed into the crowds. The dust settled and became less of a helper of the blazing sun, only bothering the mules and horses now. The usual crowd of overweight bar-goers that were Kisara's natural predators had either left for home or had joined the more venomous, increasingly drunken clans of the whorehouses. It was dangerous for any woman to go unattended, much less one so frail-looking and strange as Kisara. Of course, it was still a bit too early for things that ruthless. She had roughly three hours to find herself in a safe room with the entrance locked. And to hopefully find some way past Bakura's keen eye.

Something she was most likely to find at one of the less-dangerous-looking shops. Generally the ones not selling liquor. And the most easily accessible one for her, at the moment, was a pot-selling kiosk. The owner, a wiry little man with a frazzled beard, had clearly been in the process of making all these pots himself (quite an interesting thing to watch, in Kisara's opinion) when he had realized that it was time to light the lamps for the night hours, which was why the light from them was slightly deluded by smeared, drying clay.

She approached him timidly, waiting politely for him to find a good stopping point for his latest project, one that ballooned in at the bottom and again at the top, but with a very small opening. He seemed quite passionate about the whole business, and it was a full five minutes before he looked up and acknowledged his new customer.

"Anything y'like, m'dear," he said invitingly, gesturing to the large array of pottery behind him. He either was so eager for customers that he didn't care about her appearance, or he couldn't see her complexion well enough in the dim light. Probably a combination of both. "Large ones're twenty pieces, small ones- ten pieces each."

"Oh. . . ." said Kisara, "I'm very sorry, but I don't have any money. . . ."

There was an awkward silence between the two. ". . . oh." he said finally, dramatically disappointed.

"I-"she pursued, "I actually came to seek help. You see, I'm being pursued by this man, you know him- Bakura, he's-"

"Ahh, so this is where you've wandered off to!" exclaimed a familiar voice behind her. Kisara started and whirled around to see none other than her captor- indeed, he had located her in no less than a minute. Astounding, by all accounts. "Very sorry, sir," said Bakura to the potter in a rather exaggerated manner, "you'll have to excuse my sister- a bit mad, you know. Why, she thinks you're the great thief Bakura! Isn't that right, dear sister?"

Kisara said nothing. As a sort of apology, Bakura bought a pot off the man, but finding that he had absolutely no use for it, bestowed it upon her instead.

Kisara stared at the pot, also unsure of what to do with this sudden act of charity.

"You really are bad at this whole running away business," Bakura noted. "I mean, hell, you can't even- here . . ." He took pause to pull something out of his coat pocket- a small, white piece of cloth. He handed it to Kisara. "Here, to cover up a bit. Makes you look a bit less like you're begging people to come stone you." Kisara nodded, attaching the cloth so that it covered her nose and mouth, and she nearly inhaled the thing whole when she found herself suddenly with a priceless golden necklace in front of her. "And this, too," added Bakura, who had more shoved it at her nonchalantly than given it to her. "I'd keep it for myself had not this market be filled with useless trash, but perhaps you could find something to keep you out of trouble for a bit."

Kisara thanked him politely, feeling more disoriented by the second. The thief's little games of entertainment did have a good lot of rules, but none of them made any sense or seemed to serve any real importance. She trotted on.

Within the next hour, she sought help from a baker, a weaver, and a butcher and was thwarted all three times from little "coincidences" that Bakura just happened to overhear her speaking, and thus she now had a pot, three loaves of bread, and a new rug to haul around (Bakura had found some nutritional use for the beef). Her captor didn't seem particularly bothered by this rash spending. If anything, seeing Kisara waddle around, trying to balance her new gifts, was considerable entertainment for him.

And then it became apparent to Kisara that it was absolutely no use to actively go searching for sanctuary. She would either have to feign defeat or just give up entirely, and that was how she found herself doing something so typically feminine that it would surely have scared Bakura away, and that was trying on new clothes.

She hadn't intentionally decided to go into the shop, in fact, it had pulled her in quite forcefully with a gigantic length of wooly stuff, wherein she had been greeted by a very scary, many-colored man.

"Ahh, my dear young lady!" enthused the man, who sported a purple turban from which sprouted a gigantic peacock tail. "Why should one as young as you be moping around in that dirty, ragged dress of yours?" Kisara was about to explain why, but he gave her no interval in which to do so. "Ah! But it is no great difference- here, go into that tent over there and I will find just the right thing for you!" Kisara obeyed.

The tent was the equivalent of a portable changing room, so that she could see (vaguely) out of it, but no one could see in. All that there was besides herself was a mirror, and she stared back at herself wearily, not particularly pleased at what she saw. The sun was hurting her skin, it was becoming speckled and ugly. But not dark. It would never become dark. And therein lay the problem.

She didn't have much time to dwell on it, though, on account of the cloth that had just been thrown on top of her head. This was followed by three more, and then another, bombarding her rudely on the shoulders.

"Try them all on, if you will!" insisted the salesman, "See how they fit with you!" And to this, too, Kisara obeyed. Admittedly, she could not hate the whole process. Though she was not nearly as obsessed as her sisters were, she enjoyed making herself pretty, and for a moment she was taken up into a silly world of fantasy. Perhaps, she reckoned, Set would find her attractive in this, perhaps her family would envy her in that, perhaps Bakura-

She started suddenly. Perhaps Bakura would find her pretty? No, she doubted that. She wasn't sure what Bakura might do. Possibly nothing. She then looked in the mirror to her current outfit, and saw not herself but a middle-aged housewife, and she promptly did away with it. She did, however, purchase most of the other dresses, a bit guiltily, and gave away the considerable amount of change she received to a hungry-looking boy trying to pick out meat on a dry fish skeleton. The last one she wore instead of her old white dress. Then, discreetly, she began to converse with the odd salesman about her present situation, but found that Bakura had just happened to be browsing through the section at that exact time.

"Typical city girl," he snorted, staring at her newly purchased clothes. Which were on top of the rug. And the bread and the pot. It was then decided (by Bakura) that they would be spending the remainder of their free time down at the local pub, so as to avoid a small group of guards that may or may not have been under Set's control.

"You're not water intolerant or anything?" As he said this, the thief probably couldn't have cared less about her answer. Kisara wondered if he was still trying to kill up to her, or if the small talk was out of pure boredom. In any event, he seemed much more engaged in the act of drumming his fingers on the wooden table, which was saying something as he wasn't even that interested in that.

"Water's fine," she returned, interpreting. It was also free, which was good, as she imagined Bakura would find her to be particularly ungrateful to have given away all her money away.

There was a brief moment of silence, during which Bakura twirled a little piece of gold between his fingers, observing in a condescending manner a nearly table of drunks.

"So I suppose there's no fooling you," he drawled, after a moment. Kisara looked up. "You wouldn't trust me if I read you poetry every single night before you went to bed. So that's one method down." He paused. "Of course, how someone as frail and pathetic-looking as you got such a ka is beyond me. Is it a family thing or something? Are there a bunch of white-faced people like you running around with huge dragons that I'm not aware of?"

Kisara shook her head. "I really don't know. We've never had to ever think about those sorts of things . . . we try to avoid battles. But Diabound is very strong- I'm sure if strong kas run in your family, they probably run in mine . . ."

"'Ran' in my family," he corrected her. "Past tense."

"O . . . oh. . . ." she said, not really knowing how to react. "I'm sorry."

He replied in a snort. "And anyway," he drawled, "it didn't run in the family. If those royal bastards ever actually did anything to improve their monsters' skills, perhaps they wouldn't be so bloody horrified when any opposition at all comes up."

"You can train kas?" Kisara asked, genuinely interested (though she was sure you had to be able to see your ka to be able to train it).

"Sort of. Main thing is keeping your own physical condition. Which doesn't explain you, mind. Having a couple fields to have to tend to helps. And some livestock. I mean, if you could get a decent rebellion among the farmers, they could easily outdo what's left of the royalty."

And then neither spoke for the remainder of the time there. It struck Kisara as odd that no one seemed to notice Bakura. After all, surely everyone knew that white hair and the scar of his? But suddenly she knew very well why.

"Hey, doesn't that guy look familiar over there?" grunted someone from another table, just loud enough over the din so that Kisara could understand.

"Hmm, yeah....." drawled another in a gravelly voice, "Got that creepy scar that looks just like his, eh? And the hair, too. . . ."

Kisara's innards seized up. Was it possible, after all this ridiculous time, that someone would convict Bakura?

"Yeah, but didn't the High Priest Set announce that he was dead a while back?"

This was a matter to take into serious consideration. "Hey, yeah . . . you're right. . . ." He took another swig from his mug. "Well, if Set says it, it _must_ be right." and that, as it were, concluded the manner in all possible aspects, and Bakura was thus obligated to ask why Kisara had suddenly taken to whacking her head against the table.

The hour passed with exceeding slowness and Kisara was almost happy when Bakura finally rose from his seat, tugging her along with him like an old rag doll. The streets were emptier now, and you could smell the air with a freshness that awoke senses you barely even knew, not only seeing but feeling and smelling the vast emptiness that stretched out on all sides. What was left illuminated was ghastly and vile– and generally drunken. The men passed by her with a resentful snort– in their deluded state of mind, they could not see her unusual skin, only that she was a fairly attractive woman who was already taken, and her owner looked formidable enough not to be meddled with. Still, she was sure that if she lagged behind one of them would get their ruddy hands on her, so she clung to Bakura's side, pretending not to notice them.

The palace had fallen into silence by the time the two of them arrived—only the quiet glow of the nightly entertainment for the remaining priests disturbed the utter tranquility. Kisara imagined there were guards on duty, of course. They were probably everywhere, waiting for someone to forget their presence, but wherever they were, Bakura was quite skilled in keeping them blissfully ignorant of his existence. He had a way, Kisara observed, of walking without making a single sound. It was graceful and controlled; it became fairly obvious that the weapon of silence was something he had practiced at for some time now, and there was no doubt that he took advantage of the skill very often.

Kisara balled her fists and dug them into her chest, in hopes of strangling the anxiety that had burrowed its way into it like a ringworm. This did indeed relieve the tension a little, so she took a bunch of her hair and stuck it there, though she didn't quite know why. She heard Bakura snort and spent a good deal of time wondering if it was in reaction to her nervousness, or perhaps a generic disapproval of all women and their feeble habits.

She wondered to herself why she hadn't called for help yet. After all, one yelp and the entire royal guard would be at Bakura's throat. But she hadn't. Even the suggestion of such an act echoed through her mind as though detached from reality, a clause brought into existence merely for the mind to chew on, useless and silly to consider practically. Bakura seemed to hold her actions in some sort of vice that he controlled with no apparent effort, guiding her along in a deluded fog. That and the fact that she had a sickening feeling in the pit of her stomach that the guards would be so convinced of Bakura's death that they would fail to acknowledge his existence at all.

They drew closer to the light, and Bakura turned a narrow corner into an alley between two buildings, pulling Kisara along with him.

"If you'll observe. . . ." he said, brushing his fingers along the stone wall. "The builders of this palace left more passages than the inhabitants could be bothered to find—little clues in the brickwork that could be passed off as sloppiness. Easy enough to find if you pay attention. . . ." His fingers seemed to locate what they had been feeling for and found purchase in a small crevice between two bricks. Pushing this single brick to the left, a whole section of it came away noiselessly, appearing to meld right into the rest of the wall.

The interior of the palace was much less scantily guarded. It was mostly dark, save for a few candles to guide the occasional intoxicated royal, but bedsides that is served as a perfect shield for a skilled thief. Bakura took pause to glance down either hallway to see which was the more easily executable route. "That way," he murmured, pointing off to the right. Kisara didn't understand his reasoning and really had no intention of questioning them.

They traced the perimeter of the room and peered into the next—nothing special there. It was a hallway, decorated only by a few column-like statues and a broken vase. Perhaps the orderliness of the room that lead to their swift demise. Somehow leaving the safety of the wall put one on edge, a sort of edge that could prove fatal in the case of a rat suddenly trouncing past you, which was exactly what happened.

Kisara squealed, Bakura cursed and covered her mouth, but of course the chance was lost. Someone had heard them—it was time to run. Scampering back the way they had come, not bothering to cover up the passage Bakura had found, they fled, but at one point Bakura must have made a wrong turn, as the next thing they knew they were standing in front of a tall, spiked gate.

But this didn't seem to stop him. He had only stopped for a few seconds before he muttered, "Well? What are you waiting for? Get climbing."

In a dazzling moment of defiance that was born of utter confusion, Kisara did nothing. She would stay there, planted on the spot, and then the guards would come and everything would be fine. This didn't last long—before she had enjoyed half a minute of liberation, Bakura had already pushed her half way over, and the tumbled to the ground. She clasped her hands together, confused and frightened by the noise and shouting that was beginning to surround her, the sound of running feet. She couldn't stand being chased, it was among her greatest fears. Even though deliverance into the hands of the guards would be considerably beneficial on her part, her only wish now was to flee, flee and not be seen at all.

Her heart skipped a beat at a sudden, terribly unpleasant sound like something ripping, followed by a grunted curse. She assumed it to be one of the guards, but she felt immediately sick and had to squeeze herself tighter to keep the illness back.

Moments later, Bakura appeared next to her and, grabbing her by the arm, fled the scene. Kisara didn't need to be prompted—she ran like a frightened field mouse, even much faster than (she realized after a short while) Bakura. Unable to make sense of this fact, she glanced back to see why her captor was lagging behind so. Bakura glared.

"What did you stop for, stupid girl?" he snapped, "You think I'm going to be so careless as to just let you be caught if you stay still long enough?" He pushed past her, yanking her forward at the same time, but he seemed somewhat slower than he had moments before, and the graceful silence of his walk now had a slight limp to it.

Regardless of what was so ailing him, he pursued on wordlessly until they could be concealed behind one of the shops—an empty one, it was far too late for an innocent, honest shop to be open. There he finally paused, uttered a growled oath, and leaned up against the wall. Kisara stood; swaying back and forth very rapidly, wondering what was the matter, but upon recognizing it she was forced to stifle a gasp.

She only had to glance to see what had slowed him, the sheen of black-red standing out even in Bakura's already crimson coat. She now knew what the sickening ripping sound had been. Evidently, one of the spiked tops of the gate had found purchase in his side, and had quite literally torn a chunk out of him when he had leapt over. She imagined that his cursing was due to the newly found light source, allowing him to see the full extent of the damage. However, she quickly realized that he was not even looking at the wound. The part that was really bothering him was that it had left a terrible trail of blood running after them.

Despite his slight handicap, he was only still for a half a minute, then sprinted off. He seemed annoyed that Kisara just stood there, "gaping like an idiot," and had to drag her off again. For the entire time it took to reach the outskirts of the city, Kisara whimpered witlessly, as though she were the one with the injury. It was disgusting. Never had the evil men that bothered her managed to inflict upon her so deep a wound. It was like nothing she had ever seen before.

Diabound had come to the city gates (something Bakura later cursed him for) in anticipation of their arrival. The upper portion, which seemed to have taken the spiritual blow for the wound, was handing the pain much worse than Bakura was. He clutched his side, whimpering miserably, bewildered as to what had caused such sudden agony.

Bakura told him to shut up and bloody well fly already. And so he did.

Up into the air sped Diabound, Bakura on his shoulder and Kisara on Bakura's lap. She was careful to stay on the bloodless side of him as much as she could without falling off. Bakura himself was brooding and silent, clearly angry with Kisara, but he was trying too hard to ignore the pain to be properly upset with her. Kisara was fearful of his silence, and shivered. She made not a sound, dreading when the silence would be broken. Why hadn't she just run away from him? Why had she been scared of being caught? Why had Bakura even brought her here? Oh, yes, she recalled; she was supposed to be the evening's entertainment, and she had failed miserably to be anything worthwhile, even to the one person she wanted to be away from more than anything (right?).

Her gaze turned to the new clothes she had bought—the pottery and food was long gone. What did she think of Bakura, really? She certainly didn't fear him as she had when she first met him, nor did hatred seem like a good description. She missed Set, of course, and she missed home . . . but whatever was keeping her with Bakura, she wouldn't mind staying a little longer. After all, she had a feeling Diabound would be lonely without her.

It was cold up above the clouds. She couldn't help but nestle herself against Bakura's coat, it was the only real comfort there was. It didn't really matter who she was with. For some time after she felt only the silence brushing around her. Slowly, she dropped out of all knowledge. But she didn't know that, really. From what she saw, there was only the darkness growing darker, blending utterly, and then, near the very end, light.

Fact: I hate this chapter. I will enjoy writing the next chapter or face serious lack of self-esteem.

Story related: I seriously doubt they had drugs back then as in the sense that we do. With their lovely amputation stuff goin' on there. But I'd imagine that in one messy way or another, people found a way to mix certain substances (probably alcohol related? I haven't really looked into this stuff) to create certain effects.

Also, I'm not sure if you caught that "subtle" crack on how so much YGO! Romance fics get kindled by the remark of, "Wow, he's hot!"

Reply to Voakands: Thanks for the positive review, though I'm not so sure about your idea with the whole "there are too many happy endings in the world." You see, if this were about you and your opinions, it would be perfectly fine. Unfortunately for you, everything I say is right, and therefore you are wrong. Also, that statement is probably somehow speaking out against the government, making you a terrorist. Mm'kay? ;)

In other words: Oh, bugger off and go read Anne Rice or one of her copy-arses a term I use for people who basically leech off her idea of angsty vampires because it's omg leik so original!!!!11one: the Cirque du Freak series, "Demon in my View", and most of the fantasy AU in the YGO! section because vampires suck unless they're ugly and possess no real human emotions. Why? Because they're vampires. Don't question the vampires. Or I'll send Former and Mr. Wilson on you.

Oh! Oh! New award. The "Aww Ary you use too complex sentences it makes it dull and boring boo hoo woe is me" Award. Look, if you think this is tough, you're probably one of those people who complain about the required reading list in highschool, even if you're reading something like Johnny Tremain (I don't know why we were reading that thing- that's a children's book, demmit. ). Complex words? That's what dictionaries are for, foo'!

Flaed: Eh, I dunno. I thought her reflection that the thief king might not be so bad was going a little out of character, meself. ; Maybe I'm the only one who'd have her little heart doing a hundred miles an hour at all times of the day if I were ever kidnapped by ol' Bakura. And yes, the historical inaccuracy was intentional, it's sort of a running joke I have with Bakura and M'emo...

(Death to long author's notes.)

Oh, and Kat-chan wrote a spiffy one-shot thief Bakura/Kisara. It is omg the roxorz!!!11one Read or ?storyid1952583


	6. In the Absense of a Visual

I hope I haven't confused anyone into believing that thief Bakura is Catholic Christian. That's M'emo. One thing they do have in common is being fluent in 12 Egyptian dialects. But M'emo also knows later languages that aren't invented yet. Bakura just quotes random things and Diabound sings songs that haven't been created yet.

Note to that one reviewer: Psst, there is a smoochy scene at the end of this chapter. pause

Note to everyone else: Don't take that seriously.

Kisara was jerked awake quite suddenly, and it occurred to her that they had reached some vicious turbulence. What a strange happening, she thought; the winds couldn't be _that_ treacherous. . . . They certainly didn't feel like that, yet Diabound was flailing about in it, as though about to suffer a hurricane. Bakura was yelling at him, too loud and indistinct for her to decipher. She only caught a few words here and there—

"For gods' sakes just ignore it!"

"But Bakura . . . it hurts . . . we need to stop . . ."

"No! Keep on going!"

But evidently Diabound wasn't going to keep on going, whether he wanted him to or not. His wings were quickly given out, and from what Kisara could see, the snake had fallen and was now little more than a dead weight at the end of the human half. Regardless of Bakura's valiant show of stubbornness, they were going down. Kisara yelped, grabbing hold of Diabound in hopes of not flying off, an empty hope. She found herself flailing through the air (somehow she recalled this happening not too long ago . . .), the air screeching past her, the ground flying nearer, and then a sudden splash.

Bakura was the first to regain his senses after the fall, partially because the sensation of running water bringing forth even more blood from one's wound was quite nasty enough to bring anyone to their senses. He cursed, shook the water out of his eyes and hair, and looked quickly around. They had fallen into a river—most likely some annex of the Nile, with a few pleasant-looking trees not far off. He saw Diabound fallen not far off . . . and Kisara, looking nearly dead and floating away at a rather alarming velocity.

Neither of those traits were preferable to him, and he was quick to put an end to them both. He called to Diabound sharply, but the beast wouldn't wake, and so with a frustrated snort he darted after Kisara by himself. He caught her and dragged her ashore, holding her nearly upright and trying to bring the water out of her lungs. It was outstanding how quickly she had nearly drowned.

When it seemed she was to remain in the nearly catatonic state, he found himself suddenly very anxious for her to wake up. For a brief moment, the cause of such a fear perplexed him, but of course the cause was eminent: If she were dead, he would lose any leverage against Set. If she were merely unconscious, he risked being the victim of her dragon. He shook her again, but it was still another few minutes until she was properly restored, squinting up at him in uncomfortable confusion.

She didn't seem to recall where she was or who he was for a few moments, her expression blank. Then, of course, realization came to her eyes, deluded by the pain and the wet and miserable and oh. . . . Overwhelmed by the moment and her terrible situation, she wept, limp in his arms. Involuntarily, Bakura felt a twinge of sympathy for her. A recollection of a similar predicament was brought forth, but he managed to subdue it.

"Quiet, girl," he snapped, tossing her down onto the sand and getting up, which of course only exacerbated the situation, and she cried out even louder. Thoroughly irritated, Bakura walked away from her into the shade of the tree and sat there until her anguish was overcome—something that happened about fifteen minutes later. That finished, he looked to her briefly, then went back to what had been occupying his thoughts previously: the blank air, something that managed to entertain him a good deal of the time.

"We'll have to stay here for the night," he announced, to both Kisara and his ka. Kisara nodded slightly, but he didn't notice, nor did he notice when she made her pathetic way to the shade and sat down somewhere near him, like a defeated, wretched animal. She sniffed a little, and kept her knees hugged up to her chest, but she was otherwise sedate. Bakura didn't mind her presence. Could it even be considered a comfort? It was difficult to tell, as the components for real companionship were beginning to grow fuzzy in his memory—it had been so long since he had known anyone fully that the memory was far off and somehow perverted by time that he questioned its validation. But he was sure that having anyone else near him would be a great discomfort to him, so perhaps Kisara's silence was a treasure all on its own.

Diabound wasn't taking the dilemma well at all. As the sun began to sink below the horizon, he fretted about blood loss, fretted about his own pains, fretted over Kisara—it was only Bakura's icy glare that managed to silence him. And with the silence that followed, Kisara tried to tie herself into a knot, in hopes of disappearance.

Just then, she noticed her belongings that she had bought in the city, scattered about her. Scampering from one to the next like a mouse after breadcrumbs, she gathered them all to herself and sat back down to look through them. Her dresses had gotten a bit wet, but she managed to amuse herself by scrutinizing them, admiring them. She really might look pretty in them, regardless if there was anyone there to see her. It was the girlish joy of wearing them.

Then she observed a strange bottle, placed matter-of-factly in the middle of her possessions. She took it up in her hand, observing some strange concoction within, certainly not of water.

"What's this you've got, girl?" Bakura interjected, snatching the bottle up out of her hands before she could look further.

"I . . . I don't know. . . ." she admitted. The thief merely snorted in reply. He examined the bottle, popped off the top, and sniffed at its contents. Deeming it to be nonpoisonous, he took a sip and walked away with it.

"Where you going?" asked Diabound petulantly.

"Somewhere without that girl's whining," he replied, none too quietly. Though Kisara had in fact been quiet for quite some time, she felt a sort of stabbing sensation in her chest at the accusation.

Diabound followed his master sullenly as the captive watched, and quickly followed. Unnoticed, she trotted after them, until a tall boulder served her to better use. Bakura settled down a few yards away, his Ka having draped itself encircling that general area. She observed now that the sun was setting, and doing quite a pretty job of it. She shielded her eyes from it so that her brow would not hurt from squinting.

Bakura took another swig from the bottle he had acquired and was silent, staring off sullenly into the lucid sky. Again it amazed her just how quiet he could be, and for how long—one would imagine that such a quiet soul would be shaky and weak in speech, yet she knew with what conviction and passion he could speak. It was, perhaps, that she had come across one of the few human beings who would actually take the time to consider what he said before he said it, something his Ka didn't seem to share.

"_Now_ will you do something about that cut?" Diabound pleaded.

"In a minute," Bakura said, noncommittally, like a child putting off a household chore. "After I get a bit of rest, without the wind or that dragon girl's howls in my ears." (_Howls?_ thought Kisara, _hardly so!_) "And the sooner you stop your silly bothering, the sooner I'll actually do what you want."

Then, to Kisara's surprise, the Ka addressed an issue that had been the core of her broodings for quite some time. "Why do you treat the girl like you do?" She observed that not even Diabound called her by her proper name, but that hardly mattered. What she cared about was his concern—she had always had the thoughts close to her, but had never thought to voice them. After all, Bakura had every right to treat her roughly, assuming he didn't kill her. The inquiry seemed out of place, awkward. She was glad she wasn't the one to have asked.

"Come again?" said the thief, meeting the gaze of the huge snake, causing it to cringe back considerably.

"Why do you have to treat Kisara so badly? She's a nice person, it seems such a shame that you do . . ." He paused, as if through revelation. "It would seem almost hypocritical of you, considering your own—"

"What?" snapped Bakura. "A hypocrite, am I? You know I'm not doing this on my own behalf, you know how much time and thought I've put into this retribution—oh, but of course, if you do think so, of course I'm being hypocritical! And selfish, at that! Is there anything else you would like to accuse me of?"

"Aw, no, Bakura, we didn't mean that . . ." cooed the human half, shrugging its shoulders defensively. After further questioning as to his real meaning, the ka merely shrugged again. Then, after a short moment: "I know you're only doing this for them, Bakura, but—what _would_ you do if you actually did something on your own behalf for once?"

Bakura made a sound if that were the most idiotic question possible to ask. "Well, I certainly wouldn't be here." As to where _here_ was, he didn't specify.

Diabound was surely aware that his luck was running deathly thin, but he carried on: "This was never part of the original plan, Bakura, and you know it. This kidnapping, raiding—you said all you wanted to do was take your revenge out on the Pharaoh, and you have . . . why can't you just let it rest, think of something else for a while?"

"I have no future, _Diabound_, you know it as well as I do. Thievery is a plausible profession but hardly a wholesome one . . . and frankly my family's honor and reputation is ruined enough without it."

"You were the one who really emphasized that old tale that it was a thief's town. . . ."

"_Shut up!_"

Bakura now stood, if briefly, his hands clenched. Kisara wondered what Diabound could possibly mean to achieve with this argument. He would only make him angry . . . or would he? Bakura was losing himself far too quickly, in his elongated silences Kisara had observed him to be someone who knew that showing anger meant showing weakness. Diabound meant to get through his stubbornness—why he had waited until now, she was not sure. But then it became clear: the Ka finally lead on to his thesis.

"Bakura, please, see reason for once! You know you cannot handle this, you will only end up hurting everyone. . . ."

"What does it matter what I can or can't handle? I'm not a child anymore, Diabound, so stop insisting like I act like one!"

"It's that ring you had, Bakura, that made you so mean, even to your own family, surely you notice the difference now that it's gone, it's better this way, don't go back to the city for it, it's an evil thing. . . ."

"The Millennium Items belong by right to Kru-Elna." said Bakura stately. "I refuse to abandon them simply because of your stupid superstitions about them."

Diabound whinnied. "But Bakura, be reasonable. Would your family really want this? They were simple folk. They're not worth all this. . . ."

He had gone down the wrong road. The thief's eyes flashed with a rage previously reserved only for the Pharaoh. His voice a deep growl, he warned, "Don't tell me what my family is or is not worth." And then he spoke no more.

Several moments passed in quiet. "Oh," moaned the human half of Diabound, "This is all wrong, this is all wrong. . . ." but from his master he received no consultation. Instead he sat silently for a few minutes, then stood, with the intent of returning to the small oasis.

Kisara leapt up and hurried before him, so that he wouldn't know that she had been eavesdropping. Thus, she sat down in the sand and trailed her finger through the water idly:

"Hullo," she said matter-of-factly, as Bakura came close. He halted, looked into the water, and he did so perhaps a bit haphazardly, as the contents of the bottle were surely alcoholic and probably had some power over him. But either it had subdued effect on him or he was intentionally keeping himself sober, most likely the latter. Kisara puzzled silently over this, wondering if Diabound's insistence that he didn't do any drinking was perhaps misled.

Then, "Hullo," he returned, and Kisara was suddenly stunned. She had been so little expecting a response, much less one so lacking in evil intent . . . ! And then he sat down not far from her, staring rather broodingly at the water. Perhaps, she thought, Diabound's thoughts were what he thought in his own head as well. It would make sense, as Diabound was indeed a reflection of him. If it were true, then surely his statement would have hurt more than any accusation the king's priests could have made. It was plenty reason to set him off balance, for as much as he could shout in the Ka's presence, she felt sure that he possessed a sense of conscience—how ever perturbed and deluded--that was bound to claw at him in his moments of silence. Perhaps that was why he had returned to her.

"The Nile will flood late this year," he observed idly. "A shame, the farming communities will suffer. Eventually it might also get to the cities, but . . . they always buy so much bloody surplus . . . which'll all go to rot anyway, it doesn't matter. . . ."

Kisara ventured to relate. "My family," she said quietly, "lives underground mostly . . . we don't hear of the farmers aboveground . . . but when it rains sometimes it floods us." She paused. "That's . . . how my little brother died."

Saying this seemed to spark a profound interest in Bakura, and for the first time he came to look at her directly, as though first acknowledging her being. She was immediately self-conscious: his stare was deep and sharp, and seemed very out of place.

"You had a younger brother?" he asked.

She nodded, though slowly. "Yes . . . he was young, only about four. It didn't take much water to drown him, it was sad . . ."

"Your only brother?" he pursued.

"Yes."

He nodded his head sideways. "I imagine, then, that families have become smaller since I was a child. . . ." But then he made a sound almost in disgust, and said, "But of course it hasn't been nearly that long—merely seems as much. How much could it have been since that day? Ten years, added to the four . . . fourteen years, and since it is now nearing the rainy season, it has been two months, also; now dusk, it is eight hours until the almost morning whereupon the sun will never rise again. . . ."

At this point Bakura seemed to have forgotten Kisara's presence altogether. The drink had caused him to talk of much more than he would have been inclined to otherwise, talking for his own behalf, giving such little information as to bar understanding, but saying enough so as to instill a curious fear into his captive's heart, remind her of the foggy dream and dread the sleeping hours. She wished that fear quenched, ever so, and was inclined to inform Bakura of her nightmare when he continued:

"And of course the Pharaoh was meant to die . . . what matter if it was not what I originally set out to do, it's what my family would have wanted—it's what they _do_ want, they told me so. . . ." He shook his head, as though intent upon physically dislodging some objectionable idea from it. Kisara shook slightly, the notion that she was in the presence of a madman returning to her. He frightened her, made her pity him, caused her to hug her legs to her chest, bury her head in her arms, to speak. . . .

"Bakura?" she whispered, the hum of the wind nearly overpowering the sound. He did not hear her, or at least showed no sign of having heard. He eyed the water intently now, so absorbed in its workings that she felt sure that he was in search of something below its surface. Not something wispy or abstract, no reassurances, no recollections, but something more concrete. What that thing was, however, she could hardly determine.

"I fear that the image has become foggy now," said Bakura, "One can now almost question whether anything that has happened before now was real or just some madness I have made from my own mind. Surely it would relieve some of the pain to confide in another . . . but there is, of course, no one. There is no reason that any outsider would wish to be near one so cursed—and Diabound is stupid in his idealistic views, he would very much like to think that Kru-Elna had never fallen, he sees not the necessity of revenge," Here he took pause yet again to search the waters. "However, that girl. . . ." And here Kisara felt as if the gods themselves had caught her insides and twisted. "That girl is not as the rest, certainly like none of those who dwell in the cities. There is perhaps—" But he cut short his musings in a sharp cry, springing up and stumbling back a few paces, as though visited upon by a specter. He had seen something in the water, Kisara was sure of that by his eyes, but upon looking she could find nothing so frightening. The thief murmured something to himself that Kisara could not hear, but she shivered: here already was a new emotion from her captor that she had never known before—fear, a dreadful, hopeless fear that spread to her as well. She also wished to be as far away from the water as possible, flitting back to the shelter of the trees.

Bakura lingered, eyes fixed on the spot where he had seen the ghost—if that was indeed what it was—shaking slightly. But the scare did seem to have a sobering effect on him, and within a minute or two he joined Kisara by the trees, quite nearly back to normal and in a rather sour mood (though, she observed, he still appeared to be in the practice of talking to himself):

"That bloody Diabound had better stop whining soon, I'm sick of sitting here," he growled. "We would be perfect prey if Set were to find us here, and I can't risk loosing everything for some silly flesh would." Immediately after he had said this, he faltered, finally acknowledging the cut, but just as quickly he shrugged it off. "Why are you staring at me like that, girl?" he demanded. "Have some respect, you're bloody lucky for some regular hostage whore: most would have had you raped by now."

Kisara replied quietly that she was much reassured by this indeed. Bakura took her response as substantial, storming off to gripe at Diabound. Kisara shivered as she watched him leave, and wiped the sand from her eyes.

Presently she found herself falling asleep. As her lids closed, she could almost see the shapes of the ghastly trees forming around her, but they did not come. It is hard to tell when or how one thing leads to another in the foggy land of one's sleeping hours—she knew that she had begun in with the trees, but then just as quickly she was somewhere else: The sun had long been set now, and the light of the moon permitted her a vision.

She thought herself to be not truly alive; she was not fully aware of having arms to move, nor hands to touch; nay, she felt rather like the narrator in some epic poem—an ambiguous observer, a helpless watcher.

Like most dreams, it was difficult to put a proper order to anything; one moves about as though shrouded in a golden fog, one that appears acceptable while in the state of unconsciousness, yet nigh unimaginable to the waking eye. What she saw now tugged at her memory as though she had lived through them once before—and it would not be until much sober meditation was done on the subject that she would realize that she had never known anyone she had seen in sleep. Yet it was definitely someone's memory she had stepped into, and not a perfect one, either. The rooms, the people in them, the clothes they wore—everything seemed tinted a raggedy shade of grey, and their movements were often jerky and unnatural. It became clear that the recollection was an unwanted one, somehow morbid or condemming. In her half-existent being, Kisara drew back.

There was a boy there, and upon seeing his white hair Kisara accepted him to be Bakura, only partially registering that he must have been much younger. He was watching, with no particular enthusiasm, a women she could only assume to be his mother. She did not share the stark-white quality of his hair, though it did appear to be graying quite prematurely, and she ran her hand through it as she paused in her work. She was weaving a coat out of colored wool with a makeshift machine that went _ko-chunk, ko-chunk_ whenever she wanted to secure the treads in place. She ran her fingers down the cloth to check for mistakes, having finished the initial design. Craftily, she toyed with a strand of wool until it came undone, then wove it in the contraption, finally securing it with another strand to perfect the pattern. Bakura swayed in anticipation, but when she finally held up the finished product, the brilliant red and white coat that she had always seen the present day Bakura wear, his movements froze and he stared at it. There was obvious disappointment in his expression which only grew as the coat was fitted over him. It was sadly large for him, draping more like a women's gown then a proper coat, and he shrugged it off mechanically.

"What's wrong, Bakura?" inquired his mother, a small note of desperation about her. "Don't you like it?"

"It's fine," he said, in that tone that half hoped that she would catch the sarcasm and half that she would not. Immediately after he shook it off completely and scampered off into another room so as not to embarrass himself with his own frustrated tears.

Now instead of waiting to see the mother's reaction to all this, Kisara found herself remaining with Bakura, who had forced himself into a corner. As with most little boys, he was unwilling to admit even to himself his own vulnerability and was going quite red with the effort. He uttered half-boiled insults to his mother and the loathsome present, scowling at the floor with a scowl, hiding his face altogether when a newcomer stepped into the room: his father.

He was tall and muscular, in many ways like the modern Bakura, but with a far more pleasant disposition. He wore a rather dirtied robe made in a similar fashion to the one Bakura had been given and had messy black hair which he scratched at absentmindedly as he eyed his dejected son. The intention of this visitation was nothing new. Something in the strange mentality of the good husband insisted that he should come to the aide of his wife when confronted with such a horrible threat as a seven-year-old pouting son. He approached Bakura and crouched down next to him, his brow furrowed and jaw set to show abject disappointment. Finally he took a breath and said:

"I know you been watching her make that thing for you. How long she been at that weaver now?" No reply. He pursued. "Four weeks? Five? Six, even?" Bakura muttered some incomprehensible reply, still refusing to glance upwards. The father sighed. "Bakura, you made your mother very sad just now. She's been very busy taking care of the baby, but she went through all that trouble to make you that coat because you wanted it so badly. And now you won't even wear it!"

"She just could have bought one from the caravan," Bakura muttered grudgingly. "This one looks stupid. Why can't I have one like the other kids?"

"Because," said his father sagely, but then paused to collect his thoughts. "Because . . . well, it wouldn't be special then. Your mother takes pride in her weaving, and when someone puts that much care and love into something, it means something more than something you can just buy somewhere else. Do you understand?"

"No."

After another elongated breath, he nodded his head to one side and stood. "Well, you will someday, son." He turned to leave, but added as he disappeared through the door, "Now go apologize to your mother, Bakura." But as to be expected, Bakura didn't move. The lecture had hurt his budding ego quite a bit, he wasn't about to damage it any more.

His attempts to remain there until pitied upon by his mother failed, and he soon lost interest in the endeavor. He quitted the room.

Outside, the sun was beginning to set—a cheery red-orange hue. Bakura scampered out of the house and stared about at the other adobes indecisively until he came across an old woman sitting peacefully in front of her door, admiring the sunset.

"Hey, Auntie Emmah," he said.

The woman smiled faintly and looked to him. "Ah, Bakura! What brings you here today? Did you get that new coat your mother was making for you, hmm?"

"No," said Bakura, "it was too big, an' Ah hated it. Everyone will laugh at me now. . . ."

"Ahh. . . ." said Aunt Emmah, rocking back in her chair. "That's a shame."

"An' then Dad yelled at me, he's so stupid—Ah don't ever wanna go back there."

"Is that so?" Still, indifference in her voice. Bakura seemed to accept this answer, and quieted himself for some time after. A good few minutes passed in this fashion, until he ventured, on an entirely different subject—

"Hey, have there been any travelers come to Kru-Elna in a while?"

The old woman paused. "Oh, not for some time now. Ever since those rumors got started up about us being bandit-housers, seems everyone's been avoiding our poor village."

Bakura propped up his elbows on the porch. "Why d'people go an' spread rumors like that when they're not true?" he inquired.

She shrugged. "Oh, people rarely need a reason. If a person can't find someone else to detest, he gets anxious and jittery. You kids all know perfectly well the rumors you start about each other aren't true, and yet you go on believing them, don't you?"

"Well, yeah. . . ."

"There you go, then."

"But— but-" Bakura sighed, realizing his defeat. The two sat in silence for some while, the old woman rocking back and forth peacefully. Suddenly, she glanced up, leaned forward, a look of interest passing her face.

"Well, speak of the devil," she murmured, "I do believe I see someone coming right now."

Bakura whirled around and, seeing the newcomers in the distance, clapped his hands enthusiastically. "Oh! Oh, wonderful! I bet they're bringing spices and potteries and everything! Come on, auntie, let's watch!"

And then the world blacked out. Kisara gasped, suddenly aware of her own presence. She blinked, glanced around a little at the twanging ring of utter silence.

She heard a confused utterance of something she couldn't quite comprehend and then, with all the severity as if she were the one hit, she heard it. The perfect ring of a blade, accompanied by the ever-so-small sound of quickly severed flesh. And then, naturally, the screaming. Screaming from all around her. She wheeled about, hearing it far away, right in her ear. She heard maddened hoof beats, coming far too close, right over her. She was losing balance, waving her arms frantically to catch herself—

She woke with a start, her chest aching with her sudden awakening. She had rolled onto Diabound.

And now the moment of truth.

Diabound: grabs the Blues Eyes White Dragon and gives her a big wet one

And there you have it.

Hah, I love using the word "perverted" in a non-sexual way.


End file.
